[Python-Dev] memory leaks in 2.2

[Tim Peters]

[Tim]
>> My only interaction with the gcc bug base was helping to
>> whittle down oodles of bad codegen cases on new ports. ...

[Martin v. Loewis]
> Many of them are of this kind. As a C++ person, I notice also (with
> regrets) that a significant portion is of the kind "C++ compiler
> rejects valid code, or crashes". They are easy to reproduce, so they
> probably would have caused your former companies to throw away the C++
> front-end and rewrite it from scratch.

As Fredrik suggested, we bought front ends whenever possible.  When a single
machine sells for millions, and you can buy a highly regarded front end for
a few percent of that, you'd be crazy to write your own.

> In g++, this won't happen:  nobody has the resources to rewrite it from
> scratch. And even with these bugs, g++ still is much better than the
> competition :-)

I'd be more upset if anyone had proved that C++ is compilable <wink>.

[Guido]
>>> So I'm not sure that it's realistic to keep all bugs on a page.

>> We were close once.  Now the open patches don't even fit on a page.

> I think the only time we were close was when the database was new.

As Fred and Jeremy said, when we (PythonLabs) worked intensely on closing
bugs for 1.6 and 2.0, we were close to being in phenomenal shape here.  We
don't have a fraction of the internal resource to throw at that anymore,
though, and volunteers haven't taken up the slack.  So I figure the only
reason Python stays in exceptionally good bug shape is that we also ignore
the contributed patches <0.9 wink>.