[Twisted-Python] Persisted protocol?

[Tim Allen]

On Wed, Apr 06, 2011 at 10:16:03AM +0300, anatoly techtonik wrote:
> From http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/current/core/howto/udp.html
> 
> """As you can see, the protocol is registered with the reactor. This means it
> may be persisted if it's added to an application..."""
> 
> What does 'persisted` here mean?

At some point in the past, somebody decided it would be a great idea to
have Twisted's "twistd" start applications from Python pickles; you
could start up a server, configure it interactively, and when you shut
it down the entire server state would be persisted in a pickle-file;
when you started it up it would resume exactly as it had been when you
shut it down.

The idea seems to have fallen from grace, possibly because restarting
a process is often the simplest way to resolve a production problem.
These days, new Twisted users are encouraged to use Python ".tac" files
rather than ".tap" pickles, and I expect that sentence is just a relic
of that bygone era.