Hello,
Cython's __dealloc__ special method is meant to deal with cleaning up
instances of cdef classes. However, this hooks tp_dealloc() and does not
have meaningful access to Python attributes, since those might have been
cleared by tp_clear().
I have a concrete use case where I want something like __dealloc__ but
*before* Python attributes are cleared. So this really belongs in
tp_clear().
Using a PyObject* attribute in the cdef class with manual reference
counting is not a solution since this attribute could genuinely occur in
a reference cycle.
So I would suggest to support a __clear__ special method, which would
then be called both by tp_clear() and tp_dealloc(). It's important to
note that this should be idempotent: it will be called at least once
before Python attributes are cleared but it may also be called later.
PS: I never really understood the technical difference between
tp_clear() and tp_dealloc(). It seems to me that these serve a very
similar purpose: why can't the garbage collector just call tp_dealloc()?
Jeroen.
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