[Python-Dev] Pythonic concurrency - offtopic

[Josiah Carlson]

JanC <janc13 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 10/14/05, Josiah Carlson <jcarlson at uci.edu> wrote:
> > Until Microsoft adds kernel support for fork, don't expect standard
> > Windows Python to support it.
> 
> AFAIK the NT kernel has support for fork, but the Win32 subsystem
> doesn't support it (you can only use it with the POSIX subsystem).

Good to know.  But if I remember subsystem semantics properly, you can
use a single subsystem at any time, so if one wanted to use fork from
the POSIX subsystem, one would necessarily have to massage the rest of
Python into NT's POSIX subsystem, which could be a problem because
NT/2K's posix subsystem doesn't support network interfaces, memory
mapped files, ...
    http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/y23kc048

Based on this page:
    http://www.cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/highlights.html
...it does seem possible to borrow cygwin's implementation of fork for
use on win32, but I would guess that most people would be disappointed
with its performance in comparison to unix fork.

 - Josiah