[Python-Dev] Python API version & optional features

[Guido van Rossum]

> > Hm, the "u" argument parser is a nasty one to catch.  How likely is
> > this to be the *only* reference to Unicode in a particular extension?
> 
> It is not very likely but IMHO possible for e.g. extensions
> which rely on the fact that wchar_t == Py_UNICODE and then do
> direct interfacing to some other third party code.
> 
> I guess one could argue that extension writers should check
> for narrow/wide builds in their extensions before using Unicode.
> 
> Since the number of Unicode extension writers is much smaller 
> than the number of users, I think that this apporach would be 
> reasonable, provided that we document the problem clearly in the 
> NEWS file.

OK.  I approve.

> Hmm, that would probably not make UCS-4 builds very popular ;-)

Do you have any reason to assume that it would be popular otherwise?
:-) :-) :-)

> > These warnings should use the warnings framework, by the way, to make
> > it easier to ignore a specific warning.  Currently it's a hard write
> > to stderr.
> 
> Using the warnings framework would indeed be a good idea (many older
> extensions work just fine even with later API levels; the warnings
> are annoying, though) !

Exactly.

I'm not going to make the change, but it should be a two-liner in
Python/modsupport.c:Py_InitModule4().

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)