[Python-Dev] ssize_t status (Was: release plan for 2.5 ?)

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
>>   PEP 353: Using ssize_t as the index type
> 
> 
> Neal tells me that this is in progress in a branch, but that the code
> is not yet flawless (tons of warnings etc.). Martin, can you tell us
> more?

"It works", in a way. You only get the tons of warnings with the
right compiler, and you don't actually need to fix them all to get
something useful. Not all modules need to be converted to support
more than 2**31 elements for all containers they operate on, so
this could also be based on user feedback.

Some users (so far, just Marc-Andre) have complained that this
breaks backwards compatibility. Some improvements can be made still,
but for some aspects (tp_as_sequence callbacks), I think the best
we can hope for is compiler warnings about incorrect function
pointer types.

> When do you expect this to land? Maybe aggressively merging into
> the HEAD and then releasing it as alpha would be a good way to shake
> out the final issues???

Sure: I hope to complete this all in March.

Regards,
Martin