[Python-Dev] reference counting in Py3K

[Guido van Rossum]

On 9/6/05, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> A better plan would be to build something akin to
> Pyrex into the scheme of things, so that all the
> refcount/GC issues are taken care of automatically.

That sounds exciting. I have to admit that despite hearing many
enthusiastic reviews, I've never used it myself -- in fact I've
written very little C code in the last few years, and zero new
extension modules. (Lots of Java, but that's another story. :-)

I expect that many standard extensions could benefit from a rewrite in
Pyrex, although this might take a lot of work and in some cases not
necessarily result in better code (_tkinter comes to mind -- though I
don't really know why this would be). So this shouldn't be the goal
(yet). Instead, we should encourage folks to write *new* extensions
using PyRex.

How stable is Pyrex? Would you be willing to integrate it thoroughly
with the Python source tree, to the point of contributing the code to
the PSF? (Without giving up ownership or responsibility for its
maintenance.)

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)