[Python-Dev] Moving forward on the object memory API

[Guido van Rossum]

> > We deprecate the PyMem_* functions.  There's no need for them, IMHO:
> 
> -1. The rationale behind the function spellings is, as Tim explains,
> cross-version compatibility. 

Also, I believe there once was an issue on Windows where a DLL
shouldn't call its own malloc, it should call Python's malloc (even if
they're both the system malloc!) for memory that Python might free,
and conversely it should call Python's free for memory that Python has
allocated, because the DLL might be using a different heap than the
Python core.  Wrapper functions defined by the core that call the
core's malloc/realloc/free are the only solution here.

I'm not sure if this is still an issue; I'm not even really sure it
was ever an issue; I recall learning this from reading the Tcl/Tk
sources.

> Do we need to bump the API version after these changes?

Probably.

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