[Python-Dev] Lazily GC tracking tuples

[Tim Peters]

[Kevin Jacobs, on Neil's tuple-untracking patch]
> Sorry, I wasn't very clear here.  The patch _does_ fix the performance
> problem by untracking cycle-less tuples when we use the naive version of
> our code (i.e., the one that does not play with the garbage collector).
> However, the performance of the patched GC when compared to our GC-tuned
> code is very similar.

Then Neil's patch is doing all that we could wish of it in this case (you
seem to have counted it as a strike against the patch that it didn't do
better than you can by turning off gc by hand, but that's unrealistic if
so), and then some:

>>> The good news is that another (unrelated) part of our code just became
>>> about 20-40% faster with this patch, though I need to do some fairly
>>> major surgery to isolate why this is so.

That makes it a winner if it doesn't slow non-pathological cases "too much"
(counting your cases as pathological, just because they are <wink>).