Twisted, as many of you know, is an asynchronous, or
event drivennetworking framework written in Python (https://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki). Twisted has been around for about a decade, offers many features, including low-level primitives and high-level interfaces, and works with many protocols (including HTTP, XMPP, NNTP, IMAP, SSH, IRC, FTP).
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Due to its maturity and complexity, Twisted requires a lot of time and effort to be completely ported to Python 3. Fortunately, the PSF was able to help fund some of this work; one recent result is the release of Twisted 15.4, which includes Twisted’s standard test-runner, Trial (codenamed "Trial by Fire").
The PSF Grant allowed core developer and Twisted release manager,
Amber (HawkOwl) Brown, to port Trial to Python 3. She recently sent the PSF this announcement:
Amber (HawkOwl) Brown, to port Trial to Python 3. She recently sent the PSF this announcement:
“Just wanting to let you all know that a Twisted with the PSF-funded Trial Py3 port is now released. And a little example of it in action:
https://asciinema.org/a/cthr9xezlt8mxg5dp0n73fzc9. Again, many thanks for accepting the grant proposal – the ability to dedicate a significant chunk of time to this work has meant it was completed well sooner than if the grant had not been accepted.”
Due to certain differences between Python 3 and Python 2 (e.g., removal of ClassType and unbound methods), Amber tells us that the porting of Trial required a rewriting and retesting of the test suite loader. The work is mostly done and the current port duplicates most of Trial’s previous functionality with the exception of its distributed test runner (
DistTrialRunner).
Specifically, the PSF grant allowed Amber to perform the following steps:
- Complete and test the Trial unittest loader
- Fix the remaining failing Trial tests
- Create a tool which runs only the portions of Twisted that have been ported to Python 3 for use in Twisted development
- Break up the port into smaller pieces, put them up for review, and address the review comments
- Merge the reviewed portions
Trial’s features–a front-end, the ability to handle Deferreds and asynchronous tests, and the capacity to build testcase-duration reactors, make testing much easier. The Twisted team will now be able to use Trial for continued Python 3 porting, while users of Twisted will be able to test their codebases more easily as they port them to Python 3. Because of Trial, we can look forward to Twisted 15.5 in the near future (and hope to see more users' code ported to Python 3, as well). As Amber tells us,
"15.5, coming soon, will come with another handful of ported modules, and the twistd application (a daemoniser + plugin runner, the recommended way of spawning long-running Twisted services)."
The PSF sends its gratitude and congratulations to Amber Brown and the Twisted team on this important accomplishment.
To learn more about Twisted, the following websites, video talks, and tutorials are available:
I would love to hear from readers. Please send feedback, comments, or blog ideas to me at msushi@gnosis.cx.