[Python-ideas] discouraging direct use of the C-API

[Joao S. O. Bueno]

On 6 May 2015 at 16:28, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 11:56 AM, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 6 May 2015 at 17:41, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>> > As for CFFI, is the ownership/maintenance issue solved yet? IIRC we have
>> > some really outdated versions in the CPython tree and nobody wants to
>> > step
>> > in and upgrade these to the latest CFFI, for some reason (such as that
>> > that
>> > would actually break a lot of code because the latest version is so
>> > different from the version we currently include?).
>>
>> I think you are referring to libffi (used by ctypes) here rather than
>> cffi.
>
>
> Oh dear. I think you're right. :-(
>
> Forget I said anything. Naming is hard.
>
> I'm still not sure how realistic it is to try and deprecate the C API.

I am also not sure, but I feel like it would be a __huge__ step
forward for other implementations
and Python as a language instead of the particular cPython Software Product.

Today, many people still see using the C API as "the way" to extend Python,
which implies in most extensions created being invalid for all other
implementations of the language.

(Ok, I actually don't know if cython modules
could be called from, say Pypy or Jython, but even if not, I suppose
a "jcython" and "pycython" could be made available in the future)
(fist-google-entry says cython has at least partial support for pypy already)

   js
 -><-