[Python-Dev] test_poll fails when building python 2.3.3 on osx

[Ronald Oussoren]

On 24 jan 2004, at 1:19, Bob Ippolito wrote:

>
> On Jan 23, 2004, at 5:47 PM, Jodok Batlogg wrote:
>
>> i'm trying to build py2.3.3 on osx (10.3) with gcc3.3 (and 3.1) but 
>> test_poll always fails.
>
> The poll interface is emulated in OS X 10.3, the Darwin kernel doesn't 
> actually work like that.  It might be broken, but in practice that 
> doesn't really matter because poll is very rarely used.
>
> From the header file:
> 	This file, and the accompanying "poll.c", implement the System V
> 	poll(2) system call for BSD systems (which typically do not provide
> 	poll()).  Poll() provides a method for multiplexing input and output
> 	on multiple open file descriptors; in traditional BSD systems, that
> 	capability is provided by select().  While the semantics of select()
> 	differ from those of poll(), poll() can be readily emulated in terms
> 	of select() -- which is how this function is implemented.
>
> In short, I wouldn't worry about it.  It's probably a bug on Apple's 
> part, but I'd be surprised if it would ever cause you a real problem.  
> I've never seen Python code in the wild that uses select.poll() as the 
> default I/O multiplexing mechanism (they all use select.select() 
> instead).

C code that implements the same test as the failing test in test_poll 
also fails, so yet this seems to be a bug in OSX. I haven't seen the 
specs for poll() though, it might also be a bug in the testcase :-). 
Whichever it may be, this is a harmless test failure.

Ronald