[Python-Dev] No longer enable Py_TRACE_REFS by default in debug build

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Thu, 11 Apr 2019 08:26:47 -0700
Steve Dower <steve.dower at python.org> wrote:
> On 10Apr2019 1917, Nathaniel Smith wrote:
> > It sounds like --with-pydebug has accumulated a big grab bag of
> > unrelated features, mostly stuff that was useful at some point for
> > some CPython dev trying to debug CPython itself? It's clearly not
> > designed with end users as the primary audience, given that no-one
> > knows what it actually does and that it makes third-party extensions
> > really awkward to run. If that's right then I think Victor's plan of
> > to sort through what it's actually doing makes a lot of sense,
> > especially if we can remove the ABI breaking stuff, since that causes
> > a disproportionate amount of trouble.  
> 
> Does it really cause a "disproportionate" amount of trouble? It's 
> definitely not meant for anyone who isn't working on C code, whether in 
> CPython, an extension or a host application. If you want to use 
> third-party extensions and are not able to rebuild them, that's a very 
> good sign that you probably shouldn't be on the debug build at all.

I can't really agree with that.  There are third-party extensions that
have non-trivial build requirements.  The fact that you have to rebuild
third-party dependencies is a strong deterrent against using pydebug
builds even when they may be actually useful (for example when
debugging an extension module of your own).

If you could just install mainstream binary packages (e.g. from Anaconda
or PyPI) on a debug build interpreter, the pain would go away.

Regards

Antoine.