[Biopython-dev] Bio.MultiProc

[Michiel de Hoon]

Hi everybody,

In preparation for the upcoming release, I was running the Biopython 
test suite and found that test_copen.py hangs on Cygwin. It doesn't 
fail, it just sits there forever. This may be related to the use of 
fork() instead of select() in Bio/MultiProc/copen.py. Anyway, while it 
is probably possible to fix this, I'd have to dig fairly deep into the 
code, and I am not sure if it is worth it. It looks like the copen 
functions are used only in Bio/config, which is needed for Bio.db. A 
description of the functionality of thia module can be found in the 
tutorial section 4.7.2.

Now, I don't remember users asking about this module on the mailing 
list. From the tutorial documentation, it seems to be a nice piece of 
code, but I doubt that it is being used often in practice.

So I was wondering:
1) Is anybody on this list using this code?
2) If not, can I mark it as deprecated for the upcoming release? 
Hopefully, people who are using this code will notice, and let us know 
that they need it.

--Michiel.