[Python-Dev] PEP 454 (tracemalloc) close to pronouncement

[Victor Stinner]

2013/11/11 Charles-François Natali <cf.natali at gmail.com>:
> After several exchanges with Victor, PEP 454 has reached a status
> which I consider ready for pronuncement [1]: so if you have any last
> minute comment, now is the time!

Because the PEP has a long history, 49 mercurial revisions between
september and november 2013, I tried to summarize its history.

Most important changes of the PEP 454 between initial versions and the
current (final?) version:

- tracemalloc can store a whole traceback instead of just the filename
and line number of the most recent frame

- tracemalloc is no more a high-level tool, but a core module exposing
only one thing, traces on memory blocks, with a light Snapshot class
to compute statistics. Tasks, DisplayTop class, command line interface
and metrics have been removed.

- many functions and features with no real use cases were removed. For
example, get_trace(address) was taking a raw address, whereas such
address is not directly accessible in Python. It was replaced with
get_object_traceback(obj) which has a better API.

- better API providing access to all data from traces to statistics.
Raw traces are accessible via Snapshot.traces which generates
temporary read-only view to get an object API.

- minimalist API, ex: no more Snapshot.timestamp attribute

- no more "premature optimizations". For example, statistics are no
more computed during capture in C, but computed on a snapshot in
Python.


Charles-François did a great job to convert a high-level and
specialized tool to a reusage and generic module. Thanks for all your
advices! Without all these changes, it would be harder to extend
tracemalloc later and to reuse tracemalloc for different use cases.

Victor