[Python-Dev] Deprecating C APIs (Use of PyArg_NoArgs()) (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Tue, 02 Apr 2002 16:04:51 -0500

> > -1 on removing PyArgNoArgs() ... this API is still in very active > > use in third party extensions. > > Would it be OK if it issued a warning?

Hmm, people would start screaming, I guess -- this API is used far more than e.g. the regex/regsub module combo. A one-time-per- module warning would probably be OK though.

That's what I wanted, but now that you mention it I'm not sure if the warning module can currrently detect from which module a particular C API is called -- it'll probably put the blame on a particular line in the user's code, and then repeat the warning for each different line of user code.

I seriously think that we should install a set of common third party extensions somewhere to that we can easily check usage of the APIs in the outside world, e.g. take the packages Aahz collected recently and unzip them to some directory on python.org. A grep would then quickly produce proof of "common" usage.

+1

> > I'd suggest to have a PEP which documents all C API changes > > or deprecations together with a short decsription of how to > > update old code. > > It shouldn't be a PEP (that's a proposal). It should be part of > the C API docs, possibly an appendix.

I was thinking of an informational PEP -- mostly because PEPs are easily accessible and also simple to write (LaTeX is not everybody's friend ;-).

Yeah, that's fine. Let whoever writes it decide on the format. :-)

True, but there are other instances where this was a problem in the past, e.g.

#if PYVERSIONHEX < 0x01060000 #if !defined(PyObjectDEL) # define PyObjectDEL(x) free(x) # define PyObjectDel(x) free(x) #endif #endif

Why the PY_VERSION_HEX guard? Isn't the !defined() guard enough?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)