[Python-Dev] Python 3.7: remove all private C functions from the Python C API? (original) (raw)

Brett Cannon brett at python.org
Sun Sep 11 15:21:39 EDT 2016

In general I support cleaning up our C API to more clearly delineate the boundaries of what people can rely on and what they shouldn't. Could we go farther and do the same separation of the base and limited API at the header level instead of interleaving through #ifndef?

On Sun, Sep 11, 2016, 01:38 Victor Stinner <victor.stinner at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

Currently, Python has 3 C API: * python core API * regular API: subset of the core API * stable API (ABI?), the PyLIMITEDAPI thing: subset of the regular API For practical purpose, all functions are declared in Include/*.h. Basically, Python exposes "everything". There are private functions which are exported using PyAPIFUNC(), whereas they should only be used inside Python "core". Technically, I'm not sure that we can get ride of PyAPIFUNC() because the stdlib also has extensions which use a few private functions. For Python 3.7, I propose that we move all these private functions in separated header files, maybe Include/private/ or Include/core/, and not export them as part of the "regular API". The risk is that too many C extensions rely on all these tiny "private" functions. Maybe for performance. I don't know. What do you think? See also the issue #26900, "Exclude the private API from the stable API": http://bugs.python.org/issue26900 Victor

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