For more comments, read the patches@python.org archives.
For documentation read the comments in mymalloc.h and objimpl.h.

(This is not exactly what Vladimir posted to the patches list; I've
made a few changes, and Vladimir sent me a fix in private email for a
problem that only occurs in debug mode.  I'm also holding back on his
change to main.c, which seems unnecessary to me.)

This patch fixes 3 small problems.
1) If a map is used which is generated with 'makedbm -a',
   the trailing '\0' is now handled correctely.
2) The nis.maps() function skipped the first map in the output list.
3) The library '-lnsl' is added in Setup.in (needed on Linux glibc2 and
   Solaris systems. Maybe on other systems too?)

[I note that this still doesn't work when you are using NIS+ --GvR]

(1) Use PyErr_NewException("module.class", NULL, NULL) to create the
    exception object.

(2) Remove all calls to Py_FatalError(); instead, return or
    ignore the errors -- the import code now checks PyErr_Occurred()
    after calling a module's init function, so it's no longer a
    fatal error for the initialization to fail.

Also did some small cleanups, e.g. removed unnecessary test for
"already initialized" from initfpectl(), and unified
initposix()/initnt().

I haven't checked this very thoroughly, so while the changes are
pretty trivial -- beware of untested code!

that's used in other parts of this module.

nis_maps(): use PyArg_NoArgs().

Two interesting problems in nis_maplist().  First, it is possible that
clnt_create() will return NULL.  This was being caught, but no Python
error was being set.  I use clnt_spcreateerror() to generate the value
of the exception.

But why would clnt_create() fail?  It's because no server was being
found.  And why was this?  It was because nis_maplist() tried only to
get the NIS master for the first map in the aliases list, which is
passwd.byname, and guess what?  That's the one NIS map CNRI does *not*
export!  So the yp_master() call was failing to return a valid
server.  I now cycle through all the map aliases until I find a valid
master.  If not, a different exception is set.

I'm not sure this is the completely correct way to do all this, but
short of rewriting the entire nismodule.c (to expose the proper API to
Python), it should do the trick.

  careful about these.
* arraymodule.c: added 8 byte swap; added 'i' format character; added
  reverse() method; rename read/write to fromfile/tofile.
* config.c: Set version to 0.9.9++.
* rotormodule.c (r_rand): declare k1..k5 as unsigned longs so the shifts
  will have a well-defined effect independent of word size.
* bltinmodule.c: renamed bagof() to filter().

  Added $(SYSDEF) to its build rule in Makefile.
* cgensupport.[ch], modsupport.[ch]: removed some old stuff.  Also
  changed files that still used it...  And made several things static
  that weren't but should have been...  And other minor cleanups...
* listobject.[ch]: add external interfaces {set,get}listslice
* socketmodule.c: fix bugs in new send() argument parsing.
* sunaudiodevmodule.c: added flush() and close().