[Python-Dev] reference leaks, __del__, and annotations

[Tim Peters]

[various people debating how to steal a bit from an existing PyObject member]

Let's stop this.  It's a "bike shed" argument:  even if we had 1000
spare bits, it wouldn't do any good.  Having a bit to record whether
an object has been finalized doesn't solve any problem that's been
raised recently (it doesn't cure any problems with resurrection, for
example).  Even if we wanted it just to support a slow, dubious way to
collect trash cycles containing objects with __del__ methods,
gcmodule.c would need major rewriting to make that happen.  If someone
is interested enough to do that, fine, but it sure ain't me ;-)