[Python-Dev] Python 3.7: remove all private C functions from the Python C API?

[Yury Selivanov]

Some of the functions we have are really intended to be used *only* by 
the interpreter itself.  For those it would be cool to have them in 
private headers (AFAIK we already do this, see dict-common.h for 
instance).  Other than that, I think that using the underscore 
convention is fine.


Yury


On 2016-09-11 4:37 AM, Victor Stinner wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Currently, Python has 3 C API:
>
> * python core API
> * regular API: subset of the core API
> * stable API (ABI?), the Py_LIMITED_API thing: subset of the regular API
>
> For practical purpose, all functions are declared in Include/*.h.
> Basically, Python exposes "everything". There are private functions
> which are exported using PyAPI_FUNC(), whereas they should only be
> used inside Python "core". Technically, I'm not sure that we can get
> ride of PyAPI_FUNC() because the stdlib also has extensions which use
> a few private functions.
>
> For Python 3.7, I propose that we move all these private functions in
> separated header files, maybe Include/private/ or Include/core/, and
> not export them as part of the "regular API".
>
> The risk is that too many C extensions rely on all these tiny
> "private" functions. Maybe for performance. I don't know.
>
> What do you think?
>
> See also the issue #26900, "Exclude the private API from the stable API":
> http://bugs.python.org/issue26900
>
> Victor
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