New versions breaking extensions, etc.

[Cameron Laird]

In article <mailman.7514.1102742911.5135.python-list at python.org>,
Nick Coghlan  <ncoghlan at email.com> wrote:
>Jive wrote:
>> Can someone explain to me why Python 2.4 on MS Windows has these backward
>> compatibility problems?  What am I missing?
>
>The problem is the Python C/API. At the moment, it exposes things
>directly (like 
>data structures) that may change size between major version releases. The other 
>issue is that the interpreter and the extensions may be linked to different 
>versions of the Microsoft runtime.
>
>This is a solvable problem, but it would require:
>   1. Major additions to the C/API - a "Python Major Version Agnostic" API that 
>hides all data structures behind opaque pointers, never passes file descriptors 
>between the interpreter and the extension and never gets Python to
>delete memory 
>allocated by the extension (or vice-versa)
>   2. Rewriting extensions to use the new API functions instead of the current 
>major version specific ones.
>
>Such an API is likely to be both harder to work with and slower, simply due to 
>the limitations of C.
>
>To this date, no-one has cared enough about the problem to put in the effort 
>required to make the C API version agnostic. Given that the API almost always 
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			.
Tcl went through this epiphany a few years, and has largely, 
though not exclusively, committed to use of the once-more-
redirected API called Stubs <URL: http://wiki.tcl.tk/stubs >.
Some Tcl-ers are orgasmic about the wonders of Stubs, some
ignore it, a few don't like it, and most, perhaps, aren't
even aware of its existence.  Performance doesn't appear to
be much of an issue, though.