[Python-Dev] Let's change to C API!

[Stefan Behnel]

Antoine Pitrou schrieb am 31.07.2018 um 09:45:
> On Tue, 31 Jul 2018 09:27:03 +0200
> Jeroen Demeyer <J.Demeyer at UGent.be> wrote:
>> On 2018-07-31 08:58, Antoine Pitrou wrote:
>>> I think Stefan is right that we
>>> should push people towards Cython and alternatives, rather than direct
>>> use of the C API (which people often fail to use correctly, in my
>>> experience).  
>>
>> I know this probably isn't the correct place to bring it up, but I'm 
>> sure that CPython itself could benefit from using Cython. For example, 
>> most of the C extensions in Modules/ could be written in Cython.
> 
> We don't depend on any third-party Python modules.  Adding a Cython
> dependency for CPython development would be a tough sell.

I don't really want to get into that discussion (it's more about processes
than arguments), but let me note that the CPython development already has a
couple of dependencies, such as github and its bots, or tools like argument
clinic (admittedly included), make and a C compiler (not included), and a
text editor. It's not like it's free of tools that help in writing and
maintaining the code. That's pretty much the level at which I also see
Cython. It's more complex than argument clinic, but it otherwise serves a
similar need.


> Also, a C extension can be built-in (linked statically into the
> interpreter), which I think would be hard to do with Cython.

Someone recently contributed a feature of hiding the pyinit function for
the embedding case, so people do these things already. This could use the
normal inittab mechanism, for example. What I think you might be referring
to is that Cython modules require the CPython runtime to be initialised to
a certain extent, so you couldn't implement "sys" in Cython, for example.
But Jeroen is right, Cython should be a viable option for (most of?) the
extension modules in the stdlib. Whether the CPython core devs would accept
it in their workflow or not is a totally different question.

Stefan