[IPython-dev] connecting ipythonqt to an existing kernel should not require specifying 4 ports

[MinRK]

On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 18:11, Evan Patterson <epatters at enthought.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 5:32 PM, MinRK <benjaminrk at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 17:21, Evan Patterson <epatters at enthought.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 3:58 PM, MinRK <benjaminrk at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > Hello,
> >> > In order to connect a second ipythonqt frontend to an existing kernel,
> I
> >> > must specify by hand all 4 ports at the command-line.  This really
> >> > shouldn't
> >> > be the case, especially since the default behavior is to have the
> ports
> >> > ordered sequentially.
> >>
> >> That may be the default behavior of your OS, but that's not the
> >> default behavior in general. Random port is selection is currently
> >> left entirely up to the OS (as it should be), and on some systems this
> >> means that you get ports that appear to be totally random.
> >
> > Good point, that makes a two-stage connect even more important, since you
> > can't expect the relationship between the port numbers to be well
> behaved.
> >
> >>
> >> Guaranteeing that the ports are in consecutive order requires ugly
> >> code (a while loop that keeps binding a port until you find one that
> >> has three consecutive ports that are also open). Frankly, I think that
> >> if you care what the ports are, you should just pass them when
> >> launching the kernel in the first place.
> >
> > The problem is not that I care what the ports are, quite the opposite. I
> > don't want to care what the ports are, but the current state requires me
> to
> > track a new set of 4 every time. This is quite unpleasant for launching
> > multiple clients on a kernel, in addition to being unnecessary.
> > It should be very easy to connect additional clients to a running kernel,
> > and specifying every port by hand does not qualify.
> > $> ipythonqt -e
> > should successfully connect to a kernel started with:
> > $> ipythonqt
> > At the _very worst_, a single port (or file) should have to be specified
> to
> > connect to a kernel launched with defaults.
> > This can be done, as it was in Twisted code, via a file in IPYTHON_DIR,
> or
> > even better with a two-stage connect.
>
> I see your point; something does have to be done about this. That
> being said, it's important to keep in mind that ipythonqt is currently
> not so much an application as a tech demo, so there are definitely
> some usability issues to be worked out. The Qt widget itself is
> becoming fairly polished, but the application needs some work.
>

Certainly, this sort of thing falls in priority well behind polishing the
already super cool qtwidget functionality (well done on that, by the way). I
just noticed that it requires more information than it should when I tried
testing using raw_input with multiple clients, and I had to tyep it out
several times, since the current raw_input is sufficiently broken that I had
to start many fresh frontends, rather than just killing the kernel.

-MinRK


> Evan
>
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