[Python-Dev] A little GC confusion (original) (raw)

Jeremy Hylton jeremy@alum.mit.edu
Fri, 22 Feb 2002 22:59:58 -0500

[I wrote:]

One property of types that do not have define HEAPTYPE is that their module attribute is always builtin. This makes them mighty hard to pickle. It further suggests that every type that isn't a builtin type should define HEAPTYPE.

I don't think I made much sense above. I meant to say: When my C types didn't define HEAPTYPE, it was impossible to pickle them. When I added the HEAPTYPE and defined safe_for_unpickling as a data member, it became possible to pickle instances of those types. It was far from obvious, though, that I needed to do those two things to make pickling work.

Jeremy