Python Build and C API Changes

Changes to Python’s build process and to the C API include:

• The latest release of the GNU Debugger, GDB 7, can be scripted using Python. When you begin debugging an executable program P, GDB will look for a file named P-gdb.py and automatically read it. Dave Malcolm contributed a python-gdb.py that adds a number of commands useful when debugging Python itself. For example, py-up and py-down go up or down one Python stack frame, which usually corresponds to several C stack frames. py-print prints the value of a Python variable, and py-bt prints the Python stack trace. (Added as a result of bpo-8032.)
• If you use the .gdbinit file provided with Python, the “pyo” macro in the 2.7 version now works correctly when the thread being debugged doesn’t hold the GIL; the macro now acquires it before printing. (Contributed by Victor Stinner; bpo-3632.)
• Py_AddPendingCall() is now thread-safe, letting any worker thread submit notifications to the main Python thread. This is particularly useful for asynchronous IO operations. (Contributed by Kristján Valur Jónsson; bpo-4293.)
• New function: PyCode_NewEmpty() creates an empty code object; only the filename, function name, and first line number are required. This is useful for extension modules that are attempting to construct a more useful traceback stack. Previously such extensions needed to call PyCode_New(), which had many more arguments. (Added by Jeffrey Yasskin.)
• New function: PyErr_NewExceptionWithDoc() creates a new exception class, just as the existing PyErr_NewException() does, but takes an extra char *argument containing the docstring for the new exception class. (Added by ‘lekma’ on the Python bug tracker; bpo-7033.)
• New function: PyFrame_GetLineNumber() takes a frame object and returns the line number that the frame is currently executing. Previously code would need to get the index of the bytecode instruction currently executing, and then look up the line number corresponding to that address. (Added by Jeffrey Yasskin.)
• New functions: PyLong_AsLongAndOverflow() and PyLong_AsLongLongAndOverflow() approximates a Python long integer as a C long or long long. If the number is too large to fit into the output type, an overflow flag is set and returned to the caller. (Contributed by Case Van Horsen; bpo-7528 and bpo-7767.)
• New function: stemming from the rewrite of string-to-float conversion, a new PyOS_string_to_double() function was added. The old PyOS_ascii_strtod()and PyOS_ascii_atof() functions are now deprecated.
• New function: PySys_SetArgvEx() sets the value of sys.argv and can optionally update sys.path to include the directory containing the script named by sys.argv[0] depending on the value of an updatepath parameter.
  This function was added to close a security hole for applications that embed Python. The old function, PySys_SetArgv(), would always update sys.path, and sometimes it would add the current directory. This meant that, if you ran an application embedding Python in a directory controlled by someone else, attackers could put a Trojan-horse module in the directory (say, a file named os.py) that your application would then import and run.
  If you maintain a C/C++ application that embeds Python, check whether you’re calling PySys_SetArgv() and carefully consider whether the application should be using PySys_SetArgvEx() with updatepath set to false.
  Security issue reported as CVE-2008-5983; discussed in bpo-5753, and fixed by Antoine Pitrou.
• New macros: the Python header files now define the following macros: Py_ISALNUM, Py_ISALPHA, Py_ISDIGIT, Py_ISLOWER, Py_ISSPACE, Py_ISUPPER,Py_ISXDIGIT, Py_TOLOWER, and Py_TOUPPER. All of these functions are analogous to the C standard macros for classifying characters, but ignore the current locale setting, because in several places Python needs to analyze characters in a locale-independent way. (Added by Eric Smith; bpo-5793.)
• Removed function: PyEval_CallObject is now only available as a macro. A function version was being kept around to preserve ABI linking compatibility, but that was in 1997; it can certainly be deleted by now. (Removed by Antoine Pitrou; bpo-8276.)
• New format codes: the PyFormat_FromString(), PyFormat_FromStringV(), and PyErr_Format() functions now accept %lld and %llu format codes for displaying C’s long long types. (Contributed by Mark Dickinson; bpo-7228.)
• The complicated interaction between threads and process forking has been changed. Previously, the child process created by os.fork() might fail because the child is created with only a single thread running, the thread performing the os.fork(). If other threads were holding a lock, such as Python’s import lock, when the fork was performed, the lock would still be marked as “held” in the new process. But in the child process nothing would ever release the lock, since the other threads weren’t replicated, and the child process would no longer be able to perform imports.
  Python 2.7 acquires the import lock before performing an os.fork(), and will also clean up any locks created using the threading module. C extension modules that have internal locks, or that call fork() themselves, will not benefit from this clean-up.
  (Fixed by Thomas Wouters; bpo-1590864.)
• The Py_Finalize() function now calls the internal threading._shutdown() function; this prevents some exceptions from being raised when an interpreter shuts down. (Patch by Adam Olsen; bpo-1722344.)
• When using the PyMemberDef structure to define attributes of a type, Python will no longer let you try to delete or set a T_STRING_INPLACE attribute.
• Global symbols defined by the ctypes module are now prefixed with Py, or with _ctypes. (Implemented by Thomas Heller; bpo-3102.)
• New configure option: the --with-system-expat switch allows building the pyexpat module to use the system Expat library. (Contributed by Arfrever Frehtes Taifersar Arahesis; bpo-7609.)
• New configure option: the --with-valgrind option will now disable the pymalloc allocator, which is difficult for the Valgrind memory-error detector to analyze correctly. Valgrind will therefore be better at detecting memory leaks and overruns. (Contributed by James Henstridge; bpo-2422.)
• New configure option: you can now supply an empty string to --with-dbmliborder= in order to disable all of the various DBM modules. (Added by Arfrever Frehtes Taifersar Arahesis; bpo-6491.)
• The configure script now checks for floating-point rounding bugs on certain 32-bit Intel chips and defines a X87_DOUBLE_ROUNDING preprocessor definition. No code currently uses this definition, but it’s available if anyone wishes to use it. (Added by Mark Dickinson; bpo-2937.)
  configure also now sets a LDCXXSHARED Makefile variable for supporting C++ linking. (Contributed by Arfrever Frehtes Taifersar Arahesis; bpo-1222585.)
• The build process now creates the necessary files for pkg-config support. (Contributed by Clinton Roy; bpo-3585.)
• The build process now supports Subversion 1.7. (Contributed by Arfrever Frehtes Taifersar Arahesis; bpo-6094.)