[Python-Dev] cpython: Issue #3329: Add new APIs to customize memory allocators

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Sun, 16 Jun 2013 01:48:06 +0200
Victor Stinner <victor.stinner at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2013/6/15 Christian Heimes <christian at python.org>:
> > Am 15.06.2013 14:22, schrieb Nick Coghlan:
> >> However, it's still desirable to be able to monitor those direct
> >> allocations in debug mode, thus it makes sense to have a GIL protected
> >> direct allocation API as well. You could try to hide the existence of
> >> the latter behaviour and treat it as a private API, but why? For
> >> custom allocators, it's useful to be able to *ensure* you can bypass
> >> CPython's small object allocator, rather than having to rely on it
> >> being bypassed for allocations above a certain size.
> >
> > There is even more to it. We like to keep track of memory allocations in
> > libraries that are wrapped by Python's extension modules, e.g. expat,
> > openssl etc. Almost every library has a hook to set a custom memory
> > allocator, either globally (CRYPTO_set_mem_functions) or for each object
> > (XML_ParserCreate_MM's XML_Memory_Handling_Suite).
> 
> I just create the issue http://bugs.python.org/issue18227: "Use Python
> memory allocators in external libraries like zlib or OpenSSL".
> 
> Is it possible to detect if Python is used as a standalone application
> (the classic "python" program) or if Python is embedded? If it is
> possible, we can modify the "global" memory allocators of a library.

The question is why you want to do so, not how/whether to do it.

Regards

Antoine.