[Python-Dev] No longer enable Py_TRACE_REFS by default in debug build (original) (raw)

Antoine Pitrou solipsis at pitrou.net
Mon Apr 15 06:50:00 EDT 2019

On Thu, 11 Apr 2019 08:26:47 -0700 Steve Dower <steve.dower at python.org> wrote:

On 10Apr2019 1917, Nathaniel Smith wrote: > It sounds like --with-pydebug has accumulated a big grab bag of > unrelated features, mostly stuff that was useful at some point for > some CPython dev trying to debug CPython itself? It's clearly not > designed with end users as the primary audience, given that no-one > knows what it actually does and that it makes third-party extensions > really awkward to run. If that's right then I think Victor's plan of > to sort through what it's actually doing makes a lot of sense, > especially if we can remove the ABI breaking stuff, since that causes > a disproportionate amount of trouble.

Does it really cause a "disproportionate" amount of trouble? It's definitely not meant for anyone who isn't working on C code, whether in CPython, an extension or a host application. If you want to use third-party extensions and are not able to rebuild them, that's a very good sign that you probably shouldn't be on the debug build at all.

I can't really agree with that. There are third-party extensions that have non-trivial build requirements. The fact that you have to rebuild third-party dependencies is a strong deterrent against using pydebug builds even when they may be actually useful (for example when debugging an extension module of your own).

If you could just install mainstream binary packages (e.g. from Anaconda or PyPI) on a debug build interpreter, the pain would go away.

Regards

Antoine.

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