[rogerbinns]

Yes. The interpreter warns by default, and requires steps to disable the warning. My release notes say that the GIL will be enabled when the package is loaded.

Is it madness that other packages claim they support running without the GIL, yet it is possible to cause corruption and crashes just by writing concurrent Python code? That is the case with the standard library. Compiler thread sanitizers don't work with free threaded Python. Diligent code inspection by humans is the only way to update C code so far.

Free threading is at the beginning of the project. It works. You get slow downs in single threaded performance due to extra locking, and speedups in concurrent performance due to threading. But it is possible to cause corruption and crashes via Python code. Don't expose it to untrusted data and code.

But do investigate it and see what works well and what doesn't. See what code patterns are now possible. Help improve the tools and documentation. It had to start somewhere, and the current state is somewhere.

[LtWorf]

I think what you are doing is hiding problems. I think crashes and bugs are preferable to find the issues at this point. People who want the safe option will run the regular python.

[rogerbinns]

I provide 3 options:

1) Use regular GIL Python and you get the highest levels of integrity and correctness of operation of my package

2) Use a free threaded Python, the GIL will be enabled at load time, and you get the highest levels of integrity and correctness

3) Use a free threaded Python, and set $PYTHON_GIL=0 or start with -Xgil=0 to keep the GIL disabled, and providing you do not do concurrent mutation of data provided to my package, you get the highest levels of integrity and correctness

BTW I did not randomly choose to provide the free threaded builds. I specifically asked the setuptools maintainers (under the Python Packaging Authority) how to prevent free threaded builds for PyPI. They encouraged me to do the free threaded builds so that a user doesn't to have maintain parallel regular and free threaded Python installations. And it allows option 3 above.