>> Re "threading locks cannot be used to protect things outside of a >> single process": > The Python standard library already violates this, in that the > "logging" module uses such a lock to protect the file/socket/whatever, > to which it is writing. logging is not doing anything to protect things *outside* of a single process - the logging docs make that clear, and give specific recommendations for how to use logging in a multi-process scenario. Logging is just using locks to manage contention between multiple threads in a single process. In that sense, it is no different to any other Python code that uses locks.