[Python-Dev] Activating pymalloc (original) (raw)

Paul Svensson paul@svensson.org
Fri, 15 Mar 2002 15:31:47 -0500 (EST)

On Fri, 15 Mar 2002, Tim Peters wrote:

[Guido]

... I think what's documented is of little value here given that few people bother to read it, and most people instead read the source. :-( Heh. That gets me back to where I landed many months ago: because people do rely on what the code has actually done, and what the code has actually done is expand to platform "malloc" and "free", the only truly safe way to start using pymalloc is to map all the existing macros to malloc and free directly, and change the core to use a new API (which motivated extension authors would be welcome to use too, provided they agreed to believe the new API's docs ). I expect a much simpler API would be possible if it were YAGNI-free -- even the very old distinction between "plain memory" and "object memory" has proved to be a YAGNI (worse, is actively getting in the way now).

... Tim, do you think you're ready to make a specific proposal? No, and until we make up our minds about whether to start over, it's really two or three different proposals.

One advantage of starting over is that it makes the compile time option to complain about incorrect usage much easier to implement -- just complain about anything using the old names.

/Paul