Re: python sessions

[Eric Schulte <schulte.eric@gmail.com>]

>
> From participating in evaluating code throughout the discussion and
> catching the comments throughout, I'd say yes, at least in terms of
> how other babel languages function. In other words =#+begin_src R
> :session foo= creates an R session named "foo" whereas doing the same
> with =python= instead of =R= does not yield a named session.
>
> From what others experienced, however, the functionality was working
> correctly (results were persistent across blocks and two differently
> names blocks created two different sessions), just not named
> correctly.
>

See the cond form starting at line 169 in ob-python.el.  Different
session functionality is used based on the `org-babel-python-mode'
variable, and on the version of Emacs in use (prior to 24.1 or not).

The branch taken when `org-babel-python-mode' equals 'python is
certainly broken, as it never saves the name of the newly created
buffer, so session re-use and use of multiple named sessions probably
works only when `org-babel-python-mode' equals 'python-mode.

It looks to have been years since any serious changes were made to this
portion of the code, so if the python-mode(s) have been changing in the
background this sort of bit-rot is not unexpected.

I never use python personally, so while I may be able to fix this at
some point it certainly will not be in the near future (I need to focus
on graduate school in the near term).  It would be great if someone who
uses Python code blocks could step forward to help with maintenance of
ob-python.el.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

-- 
Eric Schulte
http://cs.unm.edu/~eschulte