Use the limited C API for some of our stdlib C extensions

Victor, I’m sorry, but your long list of issues, proposals and commits just leaves me confused. What are you trying to argue exactly?

Most of those don’t seem to be about AC (Argument Clinic) at all. Looking at some samples, what is the point of making stdlib modules PEP 384 compatible? The argument seems to be “dogfooding is good” and possibly that stdlib modules are used widely as “example code” so best practices should be followed? Those aren’t technical reasons though – IMO this smells like technical solutions for social problems.

Compare this to the changes to switch modules to multi-phase init (PEP 489). Those are also largely mechanical changes that excite few people (and sometimes are having trouble getting reviewers). But the difference is that those serve a clear technical goal: to be able to safely import those modules in subinterpreters (PEP 684). Therefore I support that work. In comparison, I cannot support work to make stdlib modules use the Limited API, or work to make Argument Clinit emit code that supports it. It feels like churn, which I find unnecessarily risky (like that infamous change by Eric Raymond, over 20 years ago, to change the entire stdlib to use some newly introduced string operation that introduced some subtle bugs).