[Python-Dev] Assertion in _PyManagedBuffer_FromObject()

[Thomas Wouters]

On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 05:22, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 10:55 PM, Stefan Krah <stefan at bytereef.org> wrote:
> > Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> However, given the lack of control, an assert() isn't the appropriate
> >> tool here - PyObject_GetBuffer itself should be *checking* the
> >> constraint and then reporting an error if the check fails. Otherwise a
> >> misbehaving extension module could trivially crash the Python
> >> interpreter by returning a bad Py_buffer.
> >
> > I'm not so sure. Extension modules that use the C-API in wrong or
> > undocumented ways can always crash the interpreter. This assert()
> > should be triggered in the first unit test of the module. Now, if
> > the module does not have unit tests or they don't test against a
> > new Python version is that really our problem?
>
> Crashing out with a C assert when we can easily give them a nice
> Python traceback instead is unnecessarily unfriendly.


But you should keep in mind that for non-debug builds, asserts are
generally off. So the behaviour most people see isn't actually a crash, but
silent acceptance.

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at python.org>

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