.. _winnotes:

***********************
Notes for Windows users
***********************
- The ``_GIPCReader.get()`` timeout feature is not available.
- "Non-blocking I/O" is imitated by outsourcing blocking I/O calls to threads
  in a gevent thread pool. Compared to native non-blocking I/O as is available
  on POSIX-compliant systems, this leads to a significant messaging performance
  drop.

`Windows I/O Completion Ports <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365198%28VS.85%29.aspx>`_
(IOCP) could solve both issues in an elegant way. Currently, gevent is built on
top of libev which does not support IOCP. In the future, however, gevent might
become `libuv <https://github.com/joyent/libuv>`_-backed. libuv supports IOCP
and would allow for running the same gevent code on Windows as on
POSIX-compliant systems. Furthermore, if gevent went with libuv, the strengths
of both, the node.js and the gevent worlds would be merged. Denis Bilenko, the
maintainer of gevent, seems to be `open <https://twitter.com/gevent/status/251870755187478529>`_
to such a transition and the first steps are already
`done <https://github.com/saghul/uvent>`_.