+1 on a C API for enabling and disabling GC.

I have several instances where I create a large number of objects non-cyclic objects where I see huge GC overhead (30+ seconds with gc enabled, 0.15 seconds when disabled).

+1000 to fixing the garbage collector to be smart enough to self-regulate itself better.

In the mean time, I use the following context manager to deal with the hotspots as I find them:

class gcdisabled(object):
'''
Conext manager to temporarily disable Python's cyclic garbage collector.
The primary use is to avoid thrashing while allocating large numbers of
non-cyclic objects due to an overly aggressive garbage collector behavior.

Will disable GC if it is enabled upon entry and renable upon exit:

>>> gc.isenabled()
True
>>> with gcdisabled():
...   print gc.isenabled()
False
>>> print gc.isenabled()
True

Will not reenable if GC was disabled upon entry:

>>> gc.disable()
>>> gc.isenabled()
False
>>> with gcdisabled():
...   gc.isenabled()
False
>>> gc.isenabled()
False
'''
def __init__(self):
    self.isenabled = gc.isenabled()

def __enter__(self):
    gc.disable()

def __exit__(self, type, value, traceback):
    if self.isenabled:
      gc.enable()