Blog of Rob Galanakis (@robgalanakis)

goless- Golang semantics in Python

The goless library https://github.com/rgalanakis/goless provides Go programming language semantics built on top of Stackless Python or gevent.* Here is a Go example using channels and Select converted to goless:

c1 = goless.chan()
c2 = goless.chan()

def func1():
    time.sleep(1)
    c1.send('one')
goless.go(func1)

def func2():
    time.sleep(2)
    c2.send('two')
goless.go(func2)

for i in range(2):
    case, val = goless.select([goless.rcase(c1), goless.rcase(c2)])
    print(val)

While I am not usually a Go programmer, I am a big fan of its style and patterns. goless provides the familiarity and practicality of Python while better enabling the asynchronous/concurrent programming style of Go. Right now it includes:

  • Synchronous/unbuffered channels (send and recv block waiting for a receiver or sender).
  • Buffered channels (send blocks if buffer is full, recv blocks if buffer is empty).
  • Asynchronous channels (do not exist in Go. Send never blocks, recv blocks if buffer is empty).
  • The select function (like reflect.Select, since Python does not have anonymous blocks we could not replicate Go’s Select statement).
  • The go function (runs a function in a tasklet/greenlet).

goless is pretty well documented and tested, but please take a look or give it a try and tell us what you think here or on GitHub’s issues. I’m especially interested in adding more Go examples converted to use goless, or other Go features replicated to create better asynchronous programs.**


*. goless was written at the PyCon 2014 sprints by myself, Carlos Knippschild, and Simon Konig, with help from Kristjan Valur Jonsson and Andrew Francis (sorry the lack of accents here, I am on an unfamiliar computer). Carlos and myself were both laid off while at PyCon- if you have an interesting job opportunity for either of us, please send me an email: rob.galanakis@gmail.com

**. We are close to getting PyPy support working through its stackless.py implementation. There are some lingering issues in the tests (though the examples and other ‘happy path’ code works fine under PyPy). I’ll post again and bump the version when it’s working.

2 thoughts on “goless- Golang semantics in Python

  1. DeeJay1 says:

    So sad to hear you and Carlos were laid off :( I had hoped you were fortunate enough to be spared from the Big Ban Hammer, I’ll miss your insight and the state of Python information in one of my favourite time eaters. I really hope you’ll find an employer where you can still share your thoughts about agile and Python in the industry!

    1. Thanks for the kind words Deejay. I will definitely find an employer where I can share my thoughts, because I won’t go to an employer who won’t allow me to! (believe me it landed me in hot water at my previous company a couple times, I had to walk a fine line).

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