Using poll() by default is controversial for 2 reasons, I think:

#1 - a certain slowdown is likely to be introduced (I'll measure it)

#2 - current wait() implementation allows to specify a list of file descriptors and/or Connections objects. 
select() can deal with both while poll() does not (it will return a list of integers rather than a list of Connection instances).

I'm not sure how "public" multiprocessing.connection.wait() is considered and how much backward compatibility should matter in this case.


> behaviour might change subtly when the fd becomes > 512

What do you mean?