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Thu Apr 28 11:29:11 EDT 2016 · https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2016-April/144378.html

Serhiy Storchaka <storchaka <at> gmail.com> writes:
> 2. Most code that use PyModule_AddObject() doesn't work as intended. 
> Since the bahavior of PyModule_AddObject() contradicts the documentation 
> and is contrintuitive, we can't blame authors in this.
> 
> I don't say this is a high-impacting bug, I even agree that there is no 
> need to fix the second part in maintained releases. But this is a bug 
> unless you propose different definition for a bug.

Why do you think that module authors don't know that?  For _decimal, I was
aware of the strange behavior.  Yes, a single reference can "leak" on
failure.

The problem is that we don't seem to have any common ground here.

Do you accept the following?

  1) PyModule_AddObject() can only fail if malloc() fails.

    a) Normally (for small allocations) this is such a serious problem
       that the whole application fails anyway.

    b) Say that you're lucky and the application continues.

         i) The import fails. In some cases ImportError is caught and
            a fallback is imported (example _pydecimal). In that case
            you leak an entire DSO and something small like a single
            context object. What is the practical difference between the
            two?

        ii) The import fails and there's no fallback. Usually the
            application stops, otherwise DSO+small leak again.

       iii) Retry the import (I have never seen this):

              while(1):
                  try:
                      import leftpad
                  except (ImportError, MemoryError):
                      continue
                  break

            You could have a legitimate leak here, but see a).

Module initializations are intricate and boring.  I suspect that if
we promote wide changes across PyPI packages we'll see more additional
segfaults than theoretically plugged memory leaks.

Stefan Krah

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[Python-Dev] Inconsistency of PyModule_AddObject()