[Python-Dev] 2.5 portability problems

["Martin v. Löwis"]

I'd like to share an observation on portability of extension
modules to Python 2.5: python-ldap would crash on Solaris, see

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/a678a969c90f21ab?dmode=source&hl=en

It turns out that this was caused by a mismatch in malloc
"families" (PyMem_Del vs. PyObject_Del):

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1575329&group_id=2072&atid=102072

So if Python 2.5 crashes in malloc/free, it's probably a good
guess that some extension module failed use correct APIs.

There is probably not much we can do about this: it's already
mentioned in "Porting to 2.5" of whatsnew25. It would be good
if people were aware of this issue (and the other changes to
the C API); thus I hope that this message/thread makes it to
the python-dev summary :-)

Regards,
Martin