I guess I'm just not so cavalier.... [LWN.net]

I guess I'm just not so cavalier....

Posted Mar 25, 2010 21:18 UTC (Thu) by foom (subscriber, #14868)
In reply to: I guess I'm just not so cavalier.... by Simetrical
Parent article: Resetting PHP 6

> The Python GIL is a nonissue if you're running single-threaded code.

Not really...Python doesn't properly support multiple distinct interpreters within a process -- you
can do it, but they aren't properly isolated from each-other. One important way they aren't isolated:
they all share the same GIL. So, you can't even properly run multiple single-threaded python
interpreters within a multithreaded process. It works, but only one thread can actually run at a time,
across all interpreters.

So of course that means you can't run python (efficiently) within a threaded apache.

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I guess I'm just not so cavalier....

Posted Mar 25, 2010 22:31 UTC (Thu) by Simetrical (subscriber, #53439) [Link]

As far as I know, many/most PHP modules don't work at all with a threaded
Apache, and it's generally advised that mod_php users stick to prefork or
FastCGI. So this isn't a big advantage for PHP.