using a custom, nearly-identical macro. This probably changes how some of
these functions are compiled, which may result in fractionally slower (or
faster) execution. Considering the nature of traversal, visiting much of the
address space in unpredictable patterns, I'd argue the code readability and
maintainability is well worth it ;P

after the type objects.

solution) in the same way as listobject.c got changed. Hoping for a better
solution.

This was mostly written by Travis Oliphant.
I've inspected it all; Neal Norwitz and MvL have also looked at it
(in an earlier incarnation).

Convert Py_ssize_t using PyInt_FromSsize_t

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-February/060524.html

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 *.