Version History

This is the version history for the sysv_ipc module.

• Current – 1.1.0 (17 Jan 2021) –
  • Drop support for Python 2, also for Python 3.4 and 3.5.
  • Behavior change: ftok() now raises OSError if it fails so the particulars of the failure are visible to the caller. Thanks to James Williams for the suggestion. (Previously the function just returned -1 if it failed.)
• 1.0.1 (29 Nov 2019) –
  • Fix a memory leak bug in SharedMemory.write() that only occurred under Python 3. Thanks to Andy for reporting!
  • This will be the last version to support Python 2 which is pining for the fjords.
• 1.0.0 (2 Feb 2018) –

  I'm bumping the version number to 1.0.0 because I now consider this feature complete. That doesn't mean I won't add features, but I don't feel like I need to.

  • Added support for Python memoryview and bytearray objects to be created from a SharedMemory instance.
  • Added support for building wheels.
  • Moved source code hosting to git and GitHub.
  • Moved the demo code into its own directory.
  • Minor changes (slightly improved tests, a few compiler warnings fixed, PEP8 improvments, etc.)
• 0.7.0 (11 Feb 2016) –

  Version 0.7.0 is finally out now that this package is 7 years old...

  • Dropped compatibility with Python < 2.7.
  • Added unit tests with almost complete coverage.
  • Fixed a doc bug for SharedMemory.write(). On an attempt to write outside of the segment, the code raises ValueError. The documentation had incorrectly stated that write() would silently discard the data that overflowed the segment.
  • Fixed a code bug in SharedMemory.write() that incorrectly interpreted offsets > LONG_MAX.
  • Fixed a code bug in SharedMemory.write() that didn’t always generate a ValueError for negative offsets.
  • Fixed a doc/code bug where SharedMemory.attach() was documented to accept keyword arguments but did not. Now it does.
  • Fixed some header bugs that prevented the code from using PY_SSIZE_T_CLEAN. Thanks to Tilman Koschnick for bringing this to my attention.
  • Added doc to note that this module exposes SHM_RDONLY as a module-level constant.
• 0.6.8 (12 Sept 2014) –
  • Fixed a bug in prober.py where prober would fail on systems where Python's include file was not named pyconfig.h. (RHEL 6 is one such system.) Thanks to Joshua Harlow for the bug report and patch.
  • Spasibo again to Yuriy Taraday for pointing out that the semaphore initialization example I changed in the previous version was still not quite correct, and for suggesting something better.
• 0.6.7 (1 August 2014) –

  Spasibo to Yuriy Taraday for reporting some doc errors corrected in this version.

  • Added KEY_MIN as a module-level constant. The documentation has claimed that it was available for a long time so now the code finally matches the documentation.
  • Changed randomly generated keys to never use a value of 0.
  • Fixed two documenation errors in the special section on semaphore initialization and gave long overdue credit to W. Richard Stevens' book for the code idea. (Any code mistakes are mine, not his.)
  • This is the first version downloadable from PyPI.
• 0.6.6 (15 October 2013) –

  Added the ability to use Semaphores in context managers. Thanks to Matt Ruffalo for the suggestion and patch.

• 0.6.5 (31 March 2013) –

  Fixed a bug where SharedMemory.write() claimed to accept keyword arguments but didn't actually do so. Thanks to Matt Ruffalo for the bug report and patch.

• 0.6.4 (19 Dec 2012) –
  • Added a module-level attach() method based on a suggestion by Vladimír Včelák.
  • Added the ftok() method along with dire warnings about its use.
• 0.6.3 (3 Oct 2010) –
  • Fixed a segfault in write() that occurred any time an offset was passed. This was introduced in v0.6.0. Tack to Johan Bernhardtson for the bug report.
• 0.6.2 (6 July 2010) –
  • Updated setup.py metadata to reflect Python 3 compatibility. No functional change.
• 0.6.1 (26 June 2010) –
  • Fixed a typo introduced in the previous version that caused unpredictable behavior (usually a segfault) if a block flag was passed to MessageQueue.send(). Obrigado to Álvaro Justen and Ronald Kaiser for the bug report and patch.
• 0.6.0 (20 May 2010) –
  • Added Python 3 support.
  • Renamed a constant that caused a problem under AIX. Thanks to Loic Nageleisen for the bug report.
  • Updated this documentation a little.
• 0.5.2 (17 Jan 2010) –
  • Fixed a bug that insisted on keys > 0. Thanks to 原志 (Daniel) for the bug report and patch.
  • Fixed a bug where the module could have generated invalid keys on systems that typedef key_t as a short. I don't think such a system exists, though.
  • Fixed a LICENSE file typo.
  • Added an RSS feed to this page.
• 0.5.1 (1 Dec 2009) –

  No code changes in this version.

  • Fixed the comment in sysv_ipc_module.c that still referred to the GPL license.
  • Added the attributes __version, __author__, __license__ and __copyright__.
  • Removed file() from setup.py in favor of open().
• 0.5 (6 Oct 2009) –

  No code changes in this version.

  • Changed the license from GPL to BSD.
• 0.4.2 (22 Mar 2009) –

  No code changes in this version.

  • Fixed broken documentation links to youtube.
  • Fixed the project name in the LICENSE file.
• 0.4.1 (12 Feb 2009) –
  • Changed status to beta.
  • Added automatic generation of keys.
  • Added a message queue demo.
  • Added str() and repr() support to all objects.
  • Fixed a bug in SharedMemory.write() that could cause a spurious error of "Attempt to write past end of memory segment". This bug only occurred on platforms using different sizes for long and int, or long and py_size_t (depending on Python version). Tack to Jesper for debug help.
  • Plugged a memory leak in MessageQueue.receive().
  • Added a VERSION attribute to the module.
• 0.4 (28 Jan 2009) –
  • Added message queues.
  • Fixed a bug where the key attribute of SharedMemory objects returned garbage.
  • Fixed a bug where keys > INT_MAX would get truncated on platforms where longs are bigger than ints.
  • Provided decent inline documentation for object attributes (available via the help() command).
  • Rearranged the code which was suffering growing pains.
• 0.3 (16 Jan 2009) –

  This version features a rename of classes and errors (sorry about breaking the names), some modifications to semaphore timeouts, and many small fixes.

  A semaphore's .block flag now consistently trumps the timeout. When False, the timeout is irrelevant -- calls will never block. In prior versions, the flag was ignored when the timeout was non-zero.

  Also, on platforms (such as OS X) where semtimedop() is not supported, all timeouts are now treated as None. In other words, when .block is True, all calls wait as long as necessary.

  Other fixes –

  • Fixed the poor choices I'd made for class and error names by removing the leading "SysV" and "SysVIpc".
  • Removed dependencies on Python 2.5. The module now works with Python 2.4.4 and perhaps earlier versions.
  • Fixed a bug where I was not following SysV semaphore semantics for interaction between timeouts and the block flag.
  • Fixed compile problems on OpenSolaris 2008.05.
  • Got rid of OS X compile warnings.
  • Fixed many instances where I was making potentially lossy conversions between Python values and Unix-specific types like key_t, pid_t, etc.
  • Fixed a bug in the SharedMemory attach() function that would set an error string but not return an error value if the passed address was not None or a long.
  • Simplified the code a little.
  • Restricted the semaphore acquire() and release() delta to be between SHORT_MIN and SHORT_MAX since it is a short in the SUSv2 spec.
  • Fixed a bug where calling acquire() or release() with a delta of 0 would call .Z() instead.
  • Disallowed byte counts ≤ 0 in SharedMemory.read()
  • Fixed a bug in the SharedMemory init code that could, under vanishingly rare circumstances, return failure without setting the error code.
  • Removed some dead code relating to the .seq member of the sem_perm and shm_perm structs.
  • Stopped accessing the non-standard key (a.k.a. _key and __key) element of the ipc_perm struct.
  • Added code to ensure the module doesn't try to create a string that's larger than Python permits when reading from shared memory.
• 0.2.1 (3 Jan 2009) –
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the module-specific errors (ExistentialError, etc.) from being visible in the module.
  • Fixed a bug that re-initialized shared memory with the init character when only IPC_CREAT was specified and an existing segment was opened.
  • Fixed a bug that always defaulted the size of a shared memory segment to PAGE_SIZE. Updated code and documentation to use intelligent defaults. Tack to Jesper for the bug report.
  • Several cosmetic changes. (Added more metadata to setup.py, added a newline to the end of probe_results.h to avoid compiler complaints, etc.)
• 0.2 (16 Dec 2008) – Lots of small fixes.
  • Fixed a bug where calling shm.remove() on shared memory that was already removed would cause a SystemError. (I wasn't setting the Python error before returning.)
  • Fixed a couple of bugs that would cause the creation of a new, read-only shared memory segment to fail.
  • Fixed a bug that would cause the creation of a new, read-only semaphore to fail.
  • Added the constant IPC_CREX.
  • Renamed (sorry) MAX_KEY to KEY_MAX and MAX_SEMAPHORE_VALUE to SEMAPHORE_VALUE_MAX to be consistent with the C naming convention in limits.h.
  • Hardcoded SEMAPHORE_VALUE_MAX to 32767 until I can find a reliable way to determine it at install time.
  • Changed prober.py to write out a C header file with platform-specific definitions in it.
  • Replaced OSError in shared memory functions with custom errors from this module.
  • Added code to raise a ValueError when an attempt is made to assign an out-of-range value to a semaphore.
  • Added code to raise a ValueError when an out-of-range key is passed to a constructor.
  • Fixed a bug in the demo program conclusion.c that caused some informational messages to be printed twice.
  • Fixed some documentation bugs.
• 0.1 (4 Dec 2008) – Original (alpha) version.