Salut Victor!
Victor Stinner schrieb am 30.07.2018 um 02:36:
2018-07-29 23:40 GMT+02:00 Stefan Behnel:
From Cython's POV, exposing internals is a good thing that helps making extension modules faster.
I'm fine with Cython wanting to pay the burden of following C API changes to get best performance. But I would only allow Cython (and cffi) to use it, not all C extensions ;-)
Technically, I plan to keep access to the full API giving access to C structures and all low-level stuff, for specific use cases like Cython and debug tools. But at the end of my roadmap, it will be an opt-in option rather than the default.
Hopefully Cython exists to hide the ugly C API ;-)
I'll try my best. :)
*Hiding* internals would already break code, so I don't see the advantage over just *changing* the internals instead, but continuing to expose those new internals.
My main motivation to change the C API is to allow to change CPython. For example, I would like to experiment a specialized implementation of the list type which would store small integers as a C array of int8_t, int16_t or int32_t to be more space efficient (I'm not sure that it would be faster, I'm not really interested have SIMD-like operations in the stdlib). Currently, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS() and exposing the PyListObject structure prevent to experiment such optimization, because PyListObject.ob_items leaks PyObject**. To be honest, I'm not sure that this specific optimization is worth it, but I like to give this example since it's easy to explain it.
That specific feature already exists. It's called "array.array". And no, it's not going to be faster but slower in most cases, since it would actually require creating a new object on item access, which PyList can avoid. Cython users stumble over this problem all the time, when they type their code with C data types without noticing that the values are actually only used in an object context most of the time and end up getting boxed into Python int objects all over the place. And then they ask on the Cython mailing list why their code became slower although they statically typed everything.
The only cases where such a list/array will be faster is with Python's builtins, e.g. sum() or any(), once they get specialised for the array types, and potentially with third party extensions that make use of the denser memory layout.
But you can also already test and benchmark that by implementing the buffer interface for these builtins. Then, people can use "array.array" instead of PyList and get a speed gain. For lists of integers or floats, that is – which are actually best represented in NumPy arrays as soon as they get large and thus performance becomes interesting. But one of the reasons why the "array.array" type is little known is probably exactly the problem that its usage is inefficient compared to PyList in most cases.
I would like to *remove* PyDict_GetItem(),
I just checked how we use it in Cython and it's followed by an INCREF in almost all cases. Same for *WithError(). One (important) exception: the function argument parsing code, which collects borrowed references to what the argument tuple/dict contains, before unboxing them into the signature target types.
but maybe we can provide a 3rd party C library which would reimplement PyDict_GetItem() on top of the new PyDict_GetItemRef() function which returns a strong reference.
You can't really emulate borrowed references based on owned references. PyPy's cpyext tried that using weakrefs before, and it was both horribly slow and inherently unsafe. The main problem is that borrowed references do not have a lifetime, so whatever you do, you can never be sure when you can consider them invalidated. That doesn't mean you can't just pass a pointer to some owned reference around, but it does mean that you can't really do anything interesting with an object anymore (e.g. push it around in memory, or discard its object representation and only keep an unboxed internal representation) as soon as there is a borrowed reference to it.
BTW, Cython has various places where it avoids asking for a (fastest in CPython) borrowed reference when it compiles in PyPy, and uses an owned reference instead. Can be done.
From the point of view of Red Hat, a Linux vendor, having to support multiple Python versions is a pain, especially for QA testing. Currently, the compromise is to only provide one Python version per OS release. For example, Fedora 28 only supports Python 3.6 even if Python 3.7 has been released during Fedora 28 lifetime. For Fedora, in practice, it's fine, since they are release every 6 months. Ubuntu LTS is supported for 5 years, having an old Python version can be more annoying. And then there is RHEL which is supported for 10 years (up to 15 years for extended support). On that scale, Python release schedule doesn't fit well with RHEL support.
By "supported Python version", I not only mean the /usr/bin/pythonX.Y binary, but also packages for dozens of Python modules. Fedora 28 provides Python binaries for various Python versions (2.7, 2.7, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7 if I recall correctly), but it has only python3-* modules for Python 3.6.
Supporting 2 Python versions, like 3.6 and 3.7, means to double the size of the repository, but also double the tests for tha QA team (each time a new package version is released, usually for bugfixes). What if you want to support 3 Python versions in parallel, if not more?
Thing is, I don't really see this change for Cython implemented modules. In order to pick up new features in newer CPython versions and to cater for C-API changes at C compile time, they'll always want to be built specifically against the CPython at hand.
... in the meanwhile, macOS is stuck at Python 2.7 :-) macOS users: how much do like Python 2.7 in 2018?
This is one issue.
But a different issue. Eventually, there will be changes to the C-API that will strongly suggest or require a rebuild for the C code to adapt.
Another issue is the Python binary compiled in debug mode, known as python-dbg (or python-debug or python-debuginfo). Right now, it's mostly useless since Linux distributions don't provide two flavors of Python modules (release and debug modes): you have to recompile manually in debug mode all your C extensions used by your application. Good luck with installing build dependencies and handling compilation errors. Because of that, nobody uses the debug build, whereas it's super useful to debug C extensions. As a consequence, we (Python upstream, but also Linux vendors) get bug reports where a C extension crashed and we are unable to debug it (oh, gc.collect() crashed on an invalid object, deal with that!).
Granted. This could be improved by providing a "debug light" version of CPython that keeps the C-API unchanged but enables various assertions internally. Then the macros wouldn't be just as helpful for extensions anymore, but at least CPython itself could catch misuses of its C-API.
On a somewhat related note: Cython has a "refnanny" to check its own internal reference counting. It keeps track of all references and refcounting operations inside of a given function, and then reports any mismatches at function exit. Requires generating code into each function, so not something that you could easily deploy and switch on on user side, but certainly a nifty feature for extension authors.
Moreover, right now, it's unclear if the C API is designed for CPython internals or to be used by third party
Agreed. It's a wild mix of both.
For the "debug light" idea, some macros could be changed to enable checks only for CPython core builds, but not when the header files are used by third party code.
if it should check all arguments or not. Some functions check a few arguments, some others don't. For the functions which check arguments: you get a slowdown, even if your full application is using properly the C API. It's like running a kind of debug build in production. Would you deploy a C program compiled with assertions in production once you checked that your application is bugfix? Why should we have to pay the price of this "debug mode" in the Python compiled in "release mode"?
Well, it's probably not that bad. These "assertions" wouldn't hurt much in PGO builds, where the C compiler knows from the profile that they never strike.
So, from my POV, I'd vote for
- allowing C-API changes in each X.Y release
Which kind of changes do you want to do?
You already proposed some. There is a deprecation process for CPython. I think it would apply nicely also to the C-API.
- requiring a new binary wheel (or rebuild) for each X.Y release
It doesn't solve the issue of being stuck to one Python version per OS release.
I think that problem is solved by (mini-)conda and conda-forge.
Sorry for saying it that bluntly, but it's a distribution issue. Let distributors deal with it.
- providing a compatibility layer for "removed" C-API functionality
Above, I proposed to require a *library* for that.
Yeah, it would probably have to be a library to provide ABI backwards compatibility, not just compile time adaptation.
But you would only be able to use such library with a Python runtime which remains fully compatible with Python 3.7. No specialized list for you in that case! That's the price of backward compatibility.
Fine with me, although I don't think this has too be entirely black or white (or green or pink, if you prefer). Even if a library is used to provide certain removed operations, an extension module could still be allowed to use certain newer features from CPython 4.x, say. Not something to waste time on, though. Extensions can be expected to be either updated completely or not at all.
This is also where I would like to allow to have multiple Python "runtimes" per Python version:
- CPython compiled in release mode with backward compatibility: "python3"
- CPython compiled in debug mode "python3-dbg"
- experimental CPython, maybe faster: "experimental_python3", for example with specialized list so incompatible with PyDict_GetItem() and borrowed references
Weren't you the one who said that distributors already hate having to support a debug binary at all? :o)
- maybe add a warning to the docs of exposed internals that these are more likely to change than other parts of the C-API
Yes, we have to work on the C API documentation of CPython. Right now, I'm more at the first step on my roadmap:
"Step 1: Identify Bad C API and list functions that should be modified or even removed"
A next step would be to start to document which APIs are "bad" in this CPython documentation. Maybe start by adding a something like "provisonal deprecation warning", but only in the documentation. Or a real deprecation, but only in the doc, if we succeed to agree on APIs that should go away.
I agree that borrowed references are sometimes a bit annoying, but I also think that you would be surprised on what really proves a bad API (and what doesn't) once we have a different implementation for certain things in CPython, as long as the main goal is performance.
I'd also suggest to make Cython, pybind11 and cffi (maybe a few more) the preferred and official ways to extend and integrate with CPython, to keep those three up to date with all C-API changes, and to make it as easy as possible for users to build their code with them against new CPython releases.
I'm now really worried about new C extensions which already use "modern" solutions like Cython and cffi.
I hope you meant "*not* really worried". :)
My concern is the very long tail of C extensions which call directly the C API. I'm sure that we can enhance the C API somehow without breaking this long tail.
If you want a more radical proposal, I'd deprecate the C-API documentation, push people into not caring about the C-API themselves, and then concentrate on keeping the major code integration tools out there compatible and fast with whatever CPython can provide as "exposed internals".
Honestly, at this point, I'm open to any idea! But I'm not ok to "break the world". This plan is not going to work. Even if PyPy is promoting cffi for years, the C API remains very popular and commonly used.
I'm not sure that deprecating the API or the documentation would help. In 2018, ten years after Python 3.0 has been released, we are still discussing how to migrate old code base away from Python 2, even if they are many tools doing "most" of the migration. I'm not even aware of tools to rewrite a C extension using Cython or cffi. If it exists, why would anyone take the risk of a regression since C extensions are currently working perfectly on CPython?
My problem is to find a solution to change the C API without forcing C extension authors to change their code "too much", maybe using a new compatibility layers.
I agree that that seems the way to go.
Stefan