Python 3.4 has a new selectors module (issue bpo-16853). It would be nice to use it instead of select.poll or select.select in the subprocess module.

Other modules using select.select() or select.poll() for more than 1 file descriptor:

• asyncore
• multiprocessing.connection
• multiprocessing.forkserver

It's likely that asyncore won't be able to take any practical advantage from this integration.

To say one, epoll()/kqueue() pollers won't bring any speedup over select()/poll() because of how asyncore.loop() function is implemented (see http://bugs.python.org/issue6692#msg103628 and http://bugs.python.org/issue11273).

Also, the new selectors module only takes read and write events into account, whereas asyncore explicitly closes dispatcher in case of disconnection events (POLLOUT, etc).

In summary I'd say it's a lot wiser to leave asyncore alone and consider it frozen.

Here's a patch updating subprocess to use selectors.
(It depends on the new keys() method - issue bpo-19172.)

Here's an updated patch using the new selector.get_map() method.
It removes ~100 lines to subprocess, which is always nice.

Here's an updated patch with a better logic: in the previous version - based on current poll-based implementation, the FD was inferred from the event (i.e. read ready -> stdout/stderr, write ready -> stderr). The new version directly checks the ready file object instead. I also added an extra safety in case an unknown FD is returned (which should never happen).

subprocess_selectors-3.diff looks good to me (this patch does not
remove any test :-))

I created the issue bpo-19506 for the memoryview optimization.

New changeset 71b618f0c8e9 by Charles-François Natali in branch 'default':
Issue bpo-18923: Update subprocess to use the new selectors module.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/71b618f0c8e9