gipc: child processes and IPC for gevent

gipc (pronunciation as in “gipsy”) is an open-source Python library created by Jan-Philip Gehrcke. It provides reliable child process management and inter-process communication (IPC) in the context of gevent.

This documentation applies to gipc 1.1.0. It was built on Feb 18, 2020.

Quick links:

• gipc on GitHub
• gipc on PyPI
• Changelog
• gipc on Bitbucket (legacy)

Table of contents:

• Overview
  • Platform support
  • Download & installation
  • Versioning
• Background & Terminology
  • I/O-bound: many execution units, practically all of them wait at any given time
  • Single-threaded event-driven architecture with coroutines
  • Cooperative scheduling vs. preemptive scheduling
  • Given all of that – what is gevent and why do we need gipc?
  • “Asynchronous” vs. “synchronous”
  • More than one event loop?
• Usage
  • Quick-start example
• When would you want to use gipc, specifically?
• What are the challenges and what is gipc’s solution?
• gipc’s architecture in a nutshell
• Is gipc reliable?
• Notes for Windows users
• Examples
  • Example 1: gipc.pipe()-based messaging from greenlet in parent to child
  • Example 2: serving multiple clients (in child) from one server (in parent)
  • Example 3: time-synchronization between processes
• API reference
  • Spawning child processes
  • Creating a pipe and its handle pair
  • Handling handles
  • Controlling child processes
  • Exception types
• Author, license, contact