[Python-Dev] libffi embedded in CPython

[Matthias Klose]

On 03/11/2015 06:27 PM, Brett Cannon wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 4:49 PM Jim J. Jewett <jimjjewett at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 18, 2014, at 14:13, Maciej Fijalkowski wrote:
>>> ... http://bugs.python.org/issue23085 ...
>>> is there any reason any more for libffi being included in CPython?
>>
>>
>> Paul Moore wrote:
>>> Probably the easiest way of moving this forward would be for someone
>>> to identify the CPython-specific patches in the current version ...
>>
>> Christian Heimes wrote:
>>> That's easy. All patches are tracked in the diff file
>>> https://hg.python.org/cpython/file/3de678cd184d/Modules/_
>> ctypes/libffi.diff
>>
>> That (200+ lines) doesn't seem to have all the C changes, such as the
>> win64 sizeof changes from issue 11835.
>>
>> Besides http://bugs.python.org/issue23085, there is at least
>>     http://bugs.python.org/issue22733
>>     http://bugs.python.org/issue20160
>>     http://bugs.python.org/issue11835
>>
>> which sort of drives home the point that making sure we have a
>> good merge isn't trivial, and this isn't an area where we should
>> just assume that tests will catch everything.  I don't think it
>> is just a quicky waiting on permission.
>>
>> I've no doubt that upstream libffi is better in many ways, but
>> those are ways people have already learned to live with.
>>
>> That said, I haven't seen any objections in principle, except
>> perhaps from Steve Dower in the issues.  (I *think* he was
>> just saying "not worth the time to me", but it was ambiguous.)
>>
>> I do believe that Christian or Maciej *could* sort things out well
>> enough; I have no insight into whether they have (or someone else
>> has) the time to actually do so.
>>
> 
> Did anyone ever step forward to do this? I'm a bit worried about the
> long-term viability of ctypes if we don't have a maintainer or at least
> someone making sure we are staying up-to-date with upstream libffi.

my plan was to merge the next libffi release, something along the lines which is
released with GCC 5. But this release isn't yet done.