threading2

threading2: like the standard threading module, but awesomer.

This module is designed as a drop-in replacement and extension for the default "threading" module. It has two main objectives:

* implement primitives using native platform functionality where possible
* expose more sophisticated functionality where it can be done uniformly

The following extensions are currently implemented:

* ability to set (advisory) thread priority
* ability to set (advisory) CPU affinity at thread and process level
* thread groups for simultaneous management of multiple threads
* SHLock class for shared/exclusive (also known as read/write) locks

The following API niceties are also included:

* all blocking methods take a "timeout" argument and return a success code
* all exposed objects are actual classes and can be safely subclassed

This has currently only been tested on WinXP and Ubuntu Karmic; similar platforms should work OK, and other platforms should fall back to using sensible default behaviour, but I'm not making any guarantees at this stage.

Additional planned extensions include:

* make stack_size a kwarg when creating a thread
* native events, semaphores and timed waits on win32
* native conditions and timed waits on pthreads platforms
* native SHLock implementations (SRW on Win Vista+, pthread_rwlock)