[Python-Dev] Experiment an opt-in new C API for Python? (leave current API unchanged)

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Wed, 14 Nov 2018 11:03:49 +0100
Victor Stinner <vstinner at redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> Oh, I should stop to promote my "CPython fork" idea.
> 
> There is already an existing VM which is way faster than CPython but
> its performances are limited by the current C API. The VM is called...
> PyPy!
> 
> The bet is that migrating to a new C API would make your C extension faster.

Faster on PyPy... but potentially slower on CPython.  That's what we
(you :-)) need to investigate and solve.  Those macros and inline
functions are actually important for many use cases.

For example in PyArrow we use PySequence_Fast_GET_ITEM() (*) and even
PyType_HasFeature() (**) (to quickly check for multiple base types with
a single fetch and comparison).

(*)
https://github.com/apache/arrow/blob/master/cpp/src/arrow/python/iterators.h#L39-L86
(**)
https://github.com/apache/arrow/blob/master/cpp/src/arrow/python/helpers.cc#L266-L299

Regards

Antoine.