[Martin v. Löwis]
... Channelling Anthony (Baxter), this cannot be accepted for 2.3. It would allow for code that works on 2.3.5, but fails on 2.3.4. What's worse, the extension module can be built on 2.3.5, and the binary module will fail when run on 2.3.4, as importing the CAPI object would fail.
That is a strong argument, and you're right that "the rules" don't allow it. OTOH, unlike Jeremy's True/False example, this is an obscure piece of C with only one known user in the world (Anthony wrote the datetime C API patch, and Anthony wrote the Oracle wrapper which is the datetime C API's only known user). So an opposing "practicality beats purity" argument *could* apply too. I'm not going to make it myself, because I personally have no use for the C datetime API <wink>.