[Python-Dev] Usability of the limited API (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Thu May 28 16:28:39 CEST 2015

On 29 May 2015 at 00:11, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:

I was hoping to be able to suggest as an application bundling option that people could write a trivial wrapper script in C to fire up a Python script, and bundle that along with its dependencies and the embeddable Python distribution. Looks like that's doable, but only using the full API, which makes upgrading the bundled Python interpreter a bit messier. Ah, well, no huge loss :-(

But after this experiment, I do wonder - is the limited API really a viable option for embedders?

I personally suspect the requirement to preserve source compatibility with Python 2 has meant that the limited ABI hasn't been exercised very well to date.

As far as the high level embedding API goes, I expect it's just an oversight that it's missing from the stable ABI. There are some that can't be exposed (the ones that rely on FILE pointers), but the others should be OK.

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan at gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia

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