[Python-Dev] cpython: Issue #3329: Add new APIs to customize memory allocators (original) (raw)

Antoine Pitrou solipsis at pitrou.net
Sun Jun 16 11:50:31 CEST 2013

On Sun, 16 Jun 2013 01:48:06 +0200 Victor Stinner <victor.stinner at gmail.com> wrote:

2013/6/15 Christian Heimes <christian at python.org>: > Am 15.06.2013 14:22, schrieb Nick Coghlan: >> However, it's still desirable to be able to monitor those direct >> allocations in debug mode, thus it makes sense to have a GIL protected >> direct allocation API as well. You could try to hide the existence of >> the latter behaviour and treat it as a private API, but why? For >> custom allocators, it's useful to be able to ensure you can bypass >> CPython's small object allocator, rather than having to rely on it >> being bypassed for allocations above a certain size. > > There is even more to it. We like to keep track of memory allocations in > libraries that are wrapped by Python's extension modules, e.g. expat, > openssl etc. Almost every library has a hook to set a custom memory > allocator, either globally (CRYPTOsetmemfunctions) or for each object > (XMLParserCreateMM's XMLMemoryHandlingSuite).

I just create the issue http://bugs.python.org/issue18227: "Use Python memory allocators in external libraries like zlib or OpenSSL". Is it possible to detect if Python is used as a standalone application (the classic "python" program) or if Python is embedded? If it is possible, we can modify the "global" memory allocators of a library.

The question is why you want to do so, not how/whether to do it.

Regards

Antoine.

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