In C++, it's an error to pass a string literal to a char* function
without a const_cast(). Rather than require every C++ extension
module to put a cast around string literals, fix the API to state the
const-ness.
I focused on parts of the API where people usually pass literals:
PyArg_ParseTuple() and friends, Py_BuildValue(), PyMethodDef, the type
slots, etc. Predictably, there were a large set of functions that
needed to be fixed as a result of these changes. The most pervasive
change was to make the keyword args list passed to
PyArg_ParseTupleAndKewords() to be a const char *kwlist[].
One cast was required as a result of the changes: A type object
mallocs the memory for its tp_doc slot and later frees it.
PyTypeObject says that tp_doc is const char *; but if the type was
created by type_new(), we know it is safe to cast to char *.
-DCALL_PROFILE: Count the number of function calls executed.
When this symbol is defined, the ceval mainloop and helper functions
count the number of function calls made. It keeps detailed statistics
about what kind of object was called and whether the call hit any of
the special fast paths in the code.
Optimization:
When we take the fast_function() path, which seems to be taken for
most function calls, and there is minimal frame setup to do, avoid
call PyEval_EvalCodeEx(). The eval code ex function does a lot of
work to handle keywords args and star args, free variables,
generators, etc. The inlined version simply allocates the frame and
copies the arguments values into the frame.
The optimization gets a little help from compile.c which adds a
CO_NOFREE flag to code objects that don't have free variables or cell
variables. This change allows fast_function() to get into the fast
path with fewer tests.
I measure a couple of percent speedup in pystone with this change, but
there's surely more that can be done.
globals, _Py_Ticker and _Py_CheckInterval. This also implements Jeremy's
shortcut in Py_AddPendingCall that zeroes out _Py_Ticker. This allows the
test in the main loop to only test a single value.
The gory details are at
http://python.org/sf/602191
that info to code dynamically compiled *by* code compiled with generators
enabled. Doesn't yet work because there's still no way to tell the parser
that "yield" is OK (unlike nested_scopes, the parser has its fingers in
this too).
Replaced PyEval_GetNestedScopes by a more-general
PyEval_MergeCompilerFlags. Perhaps I should not have? I doubted it was
*intended* to be part of the public API, so just did.
Python interpreter.
This change adds two new C-level APIs: PyEval_SetProfile() and
PyEval_SetTrace(). These can be used to install profile and trace
functions implemented in C, which can operate at much higher speeds
than Python-based functions. The overhead for calling a C-based
profile function is a very small fraction of a percent of the overhead
involved in calling a Python-based function.
The machinery required to call a Python-based profile or trace
function been moved to sysmodule.c, where sys.setprofile() and
sys.setprofile() simply become users of the new interface.
