Stefan Behnel, 29.02.2012 14:42:

Stefan Behnel, 29.02.2012 14:34:

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Henry Gomersall, 29.02.2012 14:30:

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What's the preferred way to clean up a C library when a module is deleted?

PEP 3121:

http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3121/

However, given that CPython doesn't currently support unloading extension modules, your question is rather hypothetical.

Oh, what you *can* do, however, is register an "atexit" function that does the cleanup when the interpreter terminates.

Speaking of which, what about allowing users to implement a function cdef void __dealloc__() at the module level, which would then be called by the module cleanup function (if generated) before running the rest of the cleanup code? That would allow for an easier transition of user code towards a better support of PEP 3121, specifically m_clear(). http://trac.cython.org/cython_trac/ticket/218 Stefan