I don't understand _threading_local.py, but I think
that parens are needed below in class _localbase __new__().

    if args or kw and (cls.__init__ is object.__init__):
        raise TypeError...

should be "(args or kw)", I think, looking at the
related test in _patch().

I'm not quite sure if this is python 2.5, but it is in
trunk.

It isn't obvious to me that this issue is valid.

Some more context:

class _localbase(object):
    __slots__ = '_local__key', '_local__args', '_local__lock'

    def __new__(cls, *args, **kw):
        self = object.__new__(cls)
        key = '_local__key', 'thread.local.' + str(id(self))
        object.__setattr__(self, '_local__key', key)
        object.__setattr__(self, '_local__args', (args, kw))
        object.__setattr__(self, '_local__lock', RLock())

        if args or kw and (cls.__init__ is object.__init__):
            raise TypeError("Initialization arguments are not supported")

It is still valid:

>>> class MyLocal(local):
...    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
...        self.args = args
...        self.kwargs = kwargs
...
>>> MyLocal(1)

This works when local is thread._local (from thread import _local as
local), but fails when imported from _threading_local (from
_threading_local import local)

See attached patch for the test case (and the fix of course)

Thanks, Amaury.  The new test works here on Python2.6.1, failing without
the fix and passing with it.  (Passing MyLocal(a=1) and failing
MyLocal(1), as expected.)  With the fix, _threading_local.py supports
positional arguments to subclass __init__, as well as keyword arguments.

Looks good to me. Amaury, can you make sure this lands in 2.6, 2.7, 3.0
and 3.1?