[Python-Dev] New PEP: Using ssize_t as the index type (original) (raw)

Neal Norwitz nnorwitz at gmail.com
Thu Jan 19 07:29:50 CET 2006

On 1/10/06, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:

We'd also have to make sure that old extensions don't just import with a warning, since the change will introduce buffer overflows and seg faults in extensions that are not aware of the change.

I agree that on 64-bit platforms we should prevent the import. In the past we only provided a warning and the users were on their own. This is different.

If you read my massive checkin to check the return results of Py_InitModule*(), you'll realize this isn't as simple as just failing in Py_InitMethod*(). I was hoping to just modify Py_InitModule4() in Python/modsupport.c to fail and return NULL. That doesn't seem practical given that we didn't check return results. We will just crash the interpreter with standard python 2.4 modules.

ISTM we need to modify _PyImport_LoadDynamicModule() in Python/importdl.c before calling the init function (line 56, (*p)()) to check for some magic symbol that is defined only when compiling 2.5 and above. For example we could add a static int _64_bit_clean = 1; in modsupport.h. Without some trickery we will get this defined in every .o file though, not just modules.

Other ideas?

n

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