[Python-Dev] Include ctypes into core Python? (original) (raw)

Georg Brandl g.brandl-nospam at gmx.net
Wed Jan 11 00:10:22 CET 2006

Delaney, Timothy (Tim) wrote:

Guido van Rossum wrote:

On 1/10/06, Thomas Heller <theller at python.net> wrote: I would like to suggest to include ctypes into core Python, starting with the 2.5 release.

On the one hand I agree that this is a useful module, popular, mature etc. On the other hand it breaks one of the most fundamental Python guidelines: if you get a core dump (segfault etc.) it's a bug in Python or in a 3rd party extension, not in your Python code. An exception would have to be made for any code that uses ctypes, as it is usually trivial to cause core dumps with ctypes (I'd venture it's hard to avoid them ;-). I don't expect this to count against including ctypes; but I do want it to be dealt with somehow! As was pointed out on c.l.py, the dl module suffers the exact same problem (I don't know myself, as I've never used it). There are no warnings about this in the dl module documentation. I can't see how it would be possible to guarantee that such a module could not cause crashes. I'm of the opinion that having a big red warning at the top of the module documentation that this is a contributed module, and incorrect use could cause segmentation faults/crashes, etc would be sufficient.

+1.

A warning for dl might not be the worst thing.

Georg

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