[Python-Dev] Compiling the Python sources with a C++ compiler (aCC)

[Neil Hodgson]

Paul Sheer:

> My question is: are the Python maintainers interested
> in such compatibility?
>
> Although Python will always be strict ANSI C, are such
> changes not of general interest for the purposes of
> consistency of the source code?

   I think it is unlikely that such a large patch and resulting C++
compatibility policy will be accepted.

   A benefit of compiling with C++ rather than C is link time type checking.
About 10 years ago I converted a large product from C to C++ and found a few
real bugs (that is users were seeing incorrect information) due to calls not
correctly matching function signatures. While most of these sorts of errors
are found by compile time checking against header files, there are
circumstances where different contexts of header inclusion can result in
differing definitions of functions.

   Neil