In cyclic gc, clear weakrefs to unreachable objects before allowing any
Python code (weakref callbacks or __del__ methods) to run.
This is a critical bugfix, affecting all versions of Python since weakrefs
were introduced. I'll backport to 2.3.
- weakref.ref and weakref.ReferenceType will become aliases for each
other
- weakref.ref will be a modern, new-style class with proper __new__
and __init__ methods
- weakref.WeakValueDictionary will have a lighter memory footprint,
using a new weakref.ref subclass to associate the key with the
value, allowing us to have only a single object of overhead for each
dictionary entry (currently, there are 3 objects of overhead per
entry: a weakref to the value, a weakref to the dictionary, and a
function object used as a weakref callback; the weakref to the
dictionary could be avoided without this change)
- a new macro, PyWeakref_CheckRefExact(), will be added
- PyWeakref_CheckRef() will check for subclasses of weakref.ref
This closes SF patch #983019.
Also SF patch 843455.
This is a critical bugfix.
I'll backport to 2.3 maint, but not beyond that. The bugs this fixes
have been there since weakrefs were introduced.
Tim Peters
Fred Drake
Mark Hammond