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Add PEP 741 PyInitConfig API to the limited C API #149163
Description
The GDB project would be interested to use the limited C API to embed Python. Some APIs used by GDB are missing from the limited C API (well, it's limited ;-)), one of them is the PEP 741 PyInitConfig API.
I propose adding PEP 741 PyInitConfig API to the limited C API.
PEP 741 Rationale lists other projects embedding Python. More projects would benefit from PyInitConfig being in the limited C API.
For example, the vim text editor uses dlopen/dlsym and GetProcAddress on Windows to get Python symbols at runtime. The libpython library is loaded on demand (at the first Python usage). vim already supports the stable ABI. See src/if_python3.c.
So far, I found pyinstaller which already adopted the PyInitConfig API.
Activity
vstinner commented on Apr 29, 2026
The "legacy" C API to initialize Python is deprecated. Examples:
Adding PyInitConfig API to the limited C API can be a good motivation to uprade existing code using legacy C API to the limited C API.
vstinner commented on Apr 30, 2026
The PyInitConfig API is described at: https://peps.python.org/pep-0741/#specification
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vstinner commented on Oct 18, 2026
The C API rejected the addition of PyInitConfig to the limited C API: capi-workgroup/decisions#113.