On Mon, 2012-02-06 at 10:20 +0000, Marc-Andre Lemburg wrote: > Marc-Andre Lemburg <mal@egenix.com> added the comment: > > STINNER Victor wrote: > > > > STINNER Victor <victor.stinner@haypocalc.com> added the comment: > > > >> In a security fix release, we shouldn't change the linkage procedures, > >> so I recommend that the LoadLibrary dance remains. > > > > So the overhead in startup time is not an issue? > > It is an issue. Not only in terms of startup time, but also msg152362 indicated that there was negligible impact on startup time when randomization is disabled. The impact when it *is* enabled is unclear, but reported there as "isn't crippling". > because randomization per default makes Python behave in > non-deterministc ways - which is not what you want from a > programming language or interpreter (unless you explicitly > tell it to behave like that). The release managers have pronounced: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2012-January/115892.html Quoting that email: > 1. Simple hash randomization is the way to go. We think this has the > best chance of actually fixing the problem while being fairly > straightforward such that we're comfortable putting it in a stable > release. > 2. It will be off by default in stable releases and enabled by an > envar at runtime. This will prevent code breakage from dictionary > order changing as well as people depending on the hash stability.