This was mostly a matter of adding comments and light code rearrangement.
Upon untracking, gc_next is still set to NULL. It's a cheap way to
provoke memory faults if calling code is insane. It's also used in some
way by the trashcan mechanism.
object should now have a well-defined gc_refs value, with clear transitions
among gc_refs states. As a result, none of the visit_XYZ traversal
callbacks need to check IS_TRACKED() anymore, and those tests were removed.
(They were already looking for objects with specific gc_refs states, and
the gc_refs state of an untracked object can no longer match any other
gc_refs state by accident.)
Added more asserts.
I expect that the gc_next == NULL indicator for an untracked object is
now redundant and can also be removed, but I ran out of time for this.
As threatened, PyMem_{Free, FREE} also invoke the object deallocator now
when pymalloc is enabled (well, it does when pymalloc isn't enabled too,
but in that case "the object deallocator" is plain free()).
This is maximally backward-compatible, but it leaves a bitter aftertaste.
Also massive reworking of comments.
Added code to call this when PYMALLOC_DEBUG is enabled, and envar
PYTHONMALLOCSTATS is set, whenever a new arena is obtained and once
late in the Python shutdown process.
it's enabled.
Allow PyObject_Del, PyObject_Free, and PyObject_GC_Del to be used as
function designators. Provide source compatibility macros.
Make PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_UnTrack functions instead of
trivial macros wrapping functions.
and not pymalloc. Add the functions PyMalloc_New, PyMalloc_NewVar, and
PyMalloc_Del that will use pymalloc if it's enabled. If pymalloc is
not enabled then they use the standard malloc (PyMem_*).
alignment gimmick. David Abrahams notes that the standard "long double"
actually requires stricter alignment than "double" on some Tru64 box.
On my box and yours <wink>, it's the same, so no harm done on most
boxes.
The platform requires 8-byte alignment for doubles, but the GC header
was 12 bytes and that threw off the natural alignment of the double
members of a subtype of complex. The fix puts the GC header into a
union with a double as the other member, to force no-looser-than
double alignment of GC headers. On boxes that require 8-byte alignment
for doubles, this may add pad bytes to the GC header accordingly; ditto
for platforms that *prefer* 8-byte alignment for doubles. On platforms
that don't care, it shouldn't change the memory layout (because the
size of the old GC header is certainly greater than the size of a double
on all platforms, so unioning with a double shouldn't change size or
alignment on such boxes).
This simplifies the rounding in _PyObject_VAR_SIZE, allows to restore the
pre-rounding calling sequence, and allows some nice little simplifications
in its callers. I'm still making it return a size_t, though.
As Guido suggested, this makes the new subclassing code substantially
simpler. But the mechanics of doing it w/ C macro semantics are a mess,
and _PyObject_VAR_SIZE has a new calling sequence now.
Question: The PyObject_NEW_VAR macro appears to be part of the public API.
Regardless of what it expands to, the notion that it has to round up the
memory it allocates is new, and extensions containing the old
PyObject_NEW_VAR macro expansion (which was embedded in the
PyObject_NEW_VAR expansion) won't do this rounding. But the rounding
isn't actually *needed* except for new-style instances with dict pointers
after a variable-length blob of embedded data. So my guess is that we do
not need to bump the API version for this (as the rounding isn't needed
for anything an extension can do unless it's recompiled anyway). What's
your guess?
pad memory to properly align the __dict__ pointer in all cases.
gcmodule.c/objimpl.h, _PyObject_GC_Malloc:
+ Added a "padding" argument so that this flavor of malloc can allocate
enough bytes for alignment padding (it can't know this is needed, but
its callers do).
typeobject.c, PyType_GenericAlloc:
+ Allocated enough bytes to align the __dict__ pointer.
+ Sped and simplified the round-up-to-PTRSIZE logic.
+ Added blank lines so I could parse the if/else blocks <0.7 wink>.
instances).
Also added GC support to various auxiliary types: super, property,
descriptors, wrappers, dictproxy. (Only type objects have a tp_clear
field; the other types are.)
One change was necessary to the GC infrastructure. We have statically
allocated type objects that don't have a GC header (and can't easily
be given one) and heap-allocated type objects that do have a GC
header. Giving these different metatypes would be really ugly: I
tried, and I had to modify pickle.py, cPickle.c, copy.py, add a new
invent a new name for the new metatype and make it a built-in, change
affected tests... In short, a mess. So instead, we add a new type
slot tp_is_gc, which is a simple Boolean function that determines
whether a particular instance has GC headers or not. This slot is
only relevant for types that have the (new) GC flag bit set. If the
tp_is_gc slot is NULL (by far the most common case), all instances of
the type are deemed to have GC headers. This slot is called by the
PyObject_IS_GC() macro (which is only used twice, both times in
gcmodule.c).
I also changed the extern declarations for a bunch of GC-related
functions (_PyObject_GC_Del etc.): these always exist but objimpl.h
only declared them when WITH_CYCLE_GC was defined, but I needed to be
able to reference them without #ifdefs. (When WITH_CYCLE_GC is not
defined, they do the same as their non-GC counterparts anyway.)
the old flag to still compile. Remove the PyType_BASICSIZE and
PyType_SET_BASICSIZE macros. Add PyObject_GC_New, PyObject_GC_NewVar,
PyObject_GC_Resize, PyObject_GC_Del, PyObject_GC_Track,
PyObject_GC_UnTrack. Part of SF patch #421893.
must now initialize the extra field used by the weak-ref machinery to
NULL themselves, to avoid having to require PyObject_INIT() to check
if the type supports weak references and do it there. This causes less
work to be done for all objects (the type object does not need to be
consulted to check for the Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_WEAKREFS bit).
This patch modifies the type structures of objects that
participate in GC. The object's tp_basicsize is increased when
GC is enabled. GC information is prefixed to the object to
maintain binary compatibility. GC objects also define the
tp_flag Py_TPFLAGS_GC.
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.)
Tim Peters
Jim Fulton
Guido van Rossum
Mark Hammond
Neil Schemenauer
Jack Jansen
Fred Drake
Barry Warsaw
Andrew M. Kuchling
Peter Schneider-Kamp
Thomas Wouters
Vladimir Marangozov
Jeremy Hylton