[Python-Dev] RFC: PEP 445: Add new APIs to customize Python memory allocators

[Scott Dial]

On 6/18/2013 11:32 PM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
> Agreed more of that rationale needs to be moved from the issue tracker
> into the PEP, though.

Thanks for the clarification. I hadn't read the issue tracker at all. On
it's face value, I didn't see what purpose it served, but having read
Kristján's comments on the issue tracker, he would like to store state
for the allocators in that ctx pointer.[1] Having read that (previously,
I thought the only utility was distinguishing which domain it was -- a
small, glorified enumeration), but his use-case makes sense and
definitely is informative to have in the PEP, because the utility of
that wasn't obvious to me.

Thanks,
-Scott

[1] http://bugs.python.org/issue3329#msg190529
"""
One particular trick we have been using, which might be of interest, is
to be able to tag each allocation with a "context" id.  This is then set
according to a global sys.memcontext variable, which the program will
modify according to what it is doing.  This can then be used to track
memory usage by different parts of the program.
"""

-- 
Scott Dial
scott at scottdial.com