For more comments, read the patches@python.org archives.
For documentation read the comments in mymalloc.h and objimpl.h.
(This is not exactly what Vladimir posted to the patches list; I've
made a few changes, and Vladimir sent me a fix in private email for a
problem that only occurs in debug mode. I'm also holding back on his
change to main.c, which seems unnecessary to me.)
(1) Use PyErr_NewException("module.class", NULL, NULL) to create the
exception object.
(2) Remove all calls to Py_FatalError(); instead, return or
ignore the errors -- the import code now checks PyErr_Occurred()
after calling a module's init function, so it's no longer a
fatal error for the initialization to fail.
Also did some small cleanups, e.g. removed unnecessary test for
"already initialized" from initfpectl(), and unified
initposix()/initnt().
I haven't checked this very thoroughly, so while the changes are
pretty trivial -- beware of untested code!