[Python-Dev] Our failure at handling GSoC students

[Antoine Pitrou]

Le Wed, 07 Aug 2013 10:09:16 +0200,
martin at v.loewis.de a écrit :
> 
> > Robin has produced many patches that seem to reach the stated goal
> > (refactor C extension modules to take advantage of the latest PEPs
> > about module initialization and extension types definition).
> > Unfortunately, tackling both goals at the same time produces big
> > patches with a lot of churn; and it is also not obvious the PEP 384
> > refactoring is useful for the stdlib (while the PEP 3121 refactoring
> > definitely is).
> 
> Choice of supporting PEP 384 was deliberate. It will change all
> types into heap types, which is useful for multiple-interpreter
> support and GC.

If I'm not mistaken, static C types shouln't benefit much from GC,
since they only reference C functions.
Also, PyType_FromSpec() makes reference counting delicate when
subclasses are allowed.

> > What didn't produce an alarm during Robin's work is that GSoC work
> > is done in private.
> 
> It wasn't really done in private. Robin posted to python-dev, anybody
> who would have been interested could have joined discussions.

I'm sorry if I misremembered how things happened. However, it's clear
that the produced patches (including their number) cause problems for
reviewers, and very few of them have been integrated.

Regards

Antoine.