Thanks Richard!

My first reaction was YAGNI but after I read the two tickets I now understand the need for three different hooks. I suggest that we implement our own hooks like the http://linux.die.net/man/3/pthread_atfork function, especially the order of function calls:

The parent and child fork handlers shall be called in the order in which they were established by calls to pthread_atfork().  The prepare fork handlers shall be called in the opposite order.

I like to focus on three hooks + the Python API and leave the usage of the hooks to other developers.

Proposal:
* Introduce a new module called atfork (Modules/atforkmodule.c) that is build into the core.
* Move PyOS_AfterFork to Modules/atforkmodule.c.
* Add PyOS_BeforeFork() (or PyOS_PrepareFork() ?) and PyOS_AfterForkParent() 
* call the two new methods around the calls to fork() in the stdlib.

I'm not yet sure how to implement the Python API. I could either implement six methods:

  atfork.register_before_fork(callable, *args, **kwargs)
  atfork.register_after_fork_child(callable, *args, **kwargs)
  atfork.register_after_fork_parent(callable, *args, **kwargs)
  atfork.unregister_before_fork(callable)
  atfork.unregister_after_fork_child(callable)
  atfork.unregister_after_fork_parent(callable)

or two:

  atfork.register(prepare=None, parent=None, child=None, *args, **kwargs)
  atfork.unregister(prepare=None, parent=None, child=None)