> prctl is not portable. I always thought that the premise of stdlib is to
> provide portable interfaces.  BSD, for example, uses setprocname instead
> of prctl.  Also, prctl does not modify the process name shown in "ps
> uxww". Here's how PostgreSQL does this: http://tinyurl.com/mhjuqc.

Many parts of the stdlib are not portable.  It is perfectly appropriate
for the stdlib to expose a low-level, platform-specific API directly and
in a way which makes the Python API similarly low-level and non-portable.

That's not to say that a cross-platform API cannot *also* be provided,
though, assuming the functionality can be implemented *somehow* on other
platforms.  So I agree with Martin.  prctl should be exposed as-is.  If
someone would also like to expose similar functionality on on other
platforms, great.  And if someone would like to provide a cross-platform
API based on these, also great.