[Twisted-Python] documentation / kqueue / feedback

[Dr aio]

Hi out there

Let me tell you about my experience with TM so far ...

Seeing there is doc. available, I digged through it. After all TM seems
worth the effort. From what I see, I love TM.

Links are often broken, though. Often seemingly useful doc. is old, very
old. Even current doc. isn't up to date.

Anyway, I try and I mean I try hard to get on my feet following some
examples and snippets. The problem isn't the
deferreds. I understand them pretty quickly and like them. The problem is
that the docs are like a maze, irritating, frustrating and misleading rather
than helping.

Trying to write a rpy. Of course, it doesn't
work. Looking at all those different docs, I'm bewildered. Somehow
hacking my way through it.
They talk about "resource trees", yet I don't find them in the doc. I find
putchild() but all examples and docs indicate, that you can do it only
within the root resource.
Again browsing, again looking desperately for some docs, that don't mislead
and make things even more fuzzy. Falling over an article with some halfway
useful tap doc.
OK, a little later, I
have my first web server running an my first rpy works, spitting out
"test". Wow.

I'm wondering, why of all things "rpy" ? python won't generate sth. like
"rpyc" for that, which translates in lost speed, I assume. No explanation.

I'm on FreeBSD. Of course, I want to use kqueue. Now, another "funny"
journey begins ...
the py-kqueue in FreeBSD 6.3 and 7.0 is version 1.4. I remember, however,
having read something by Isthmar Trauring Shtull (forgive me, if I didn't
spell that correctly) that I need version 1.3 in order to apply his patch,
which, of course (sorry, that's my disappointment carrying me away ...),
doesn't work. No prob, I do it by
hand. To no avail. That code is old, very old and it doesn't work.
I remember havin seen some version 2 of pykqueue. Setup works nicely but
Python/twisted coughs. The module has another name now. "(%"%§$( !!!
So I fall back to the version 1.4 that comes with FreeBSD ports. It works.
But in no-deamon mode only. As soon as I tell twistd to run web.tap
deamonized it vomitts and breaks.

Intense googleing, and I mean "intense". Reading through years of this
mailing list. No positive result.

What I say is said, because I love python an I consider twisted brilliant
and immensely useful - theoretically. So, don't get me wrong and accept it
as constructive, albeit somewhat pissed off remarks, OK :)

I have the clear impression that twisted is something in between a toy and a
brilliant product. It's hackers, however, leave much to be desired in terms
of usefulness. As it is, it's a great and promising hobby but not a useful
product.

Sorry, but doc strings don't replcae a halfway decent documentation and a
reasonable tutorial, considering the highly complex matter.
Sorry, but documentation that is often enough outdated and sometimes offers
broken links is next to useless.
Sorry, but the most brilliant code is a lot less attractive and useful, if
even "stable versions" are broken, in flux, etc ...

Kqueue seems to be vital to an event driven approach like TM, yet there are
multiple versions of pykqueue floating
around, none of them properly working (and I didn't fumble around. I
plain simply used the FreeBSD port), some of
them with some mor and some with some less "annotations" (I refuse to
call that doc.)

- How about getting 1 version of pykqueue properly running and into TM ?
- How about freezing some TM version (like 8.0) and updating/matching docs?
(Of course, experiments are funny and intriguing, but quite some of us out
here need sth. stable for everydays work)
- How about writing some complete docs and tutorials? Sth. along the lines
of "My first web server wit TM" (instead all those - sometimes seeming to
contradict each other - snippets)

I'm still fascinated by TM and still willingto invest time, efforts and
brains. But I'd love to have some properly working base and docs that
expßlain rather than confuse.

Looking forward to learn and enjoy.

(Yes, Should someone need sth. tested on FreeBSD, I'll gladly be of service)
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