I think this patch should be applied, on the basis that: - the WITHOUT_COMPLEX macro doesn't appear to be documented, or linked to any existing configure option - there aren't enough developer and/or buildbot cycles to keep obscure options like this well tested and maintained - building py3k with -DWITHOUT_COMPLEX currently fails anyway - the complex type is (slightly) more tightly integrated in py3k than in trunk, thanks to PEP 3141: (-1)**0.5 produces a complex result in py3k; in trunk it gives ValueError. Any objections to getting rid of WITHOUT_COMPLEX? The patch itself looks fine to me.