This issue is for the _decimal specific parts from #4555. The patch
depends on _Pragma (C99) and gcc >= 4.0 for the contents of the pragma.
I think it will work for clang, too.

Should the libmpdec API symbols (i.e. the ones starting with mpd_*)
be hidden for _decimal.c, too?

Adding everyone from issue #4555, in case you can think of a different
(portable) solution for hiding symbols (with minimal effort).

Personally I prefer using attributes instead of pragmas.  The GCC manual recommends such as well.  There are also other sources in Modules/* that use '__attribute__ ((visibility ("hidden")))'.  Namely ctypes and zlib.

I can understand that it is more work, but I find something like the following more readable (I am not actually suggesting names here, just an example):

   #define PY_LOCAL __attribute__ ((visibility ("hidden")))

   ...

   void foo(void) PY_LOCAL;
   void bar(void) PY_LOCAL;

Meador Inge <report@bugs.python.org> wrote:
> Personally I prefer using attributes instead of pragmas.  The GCC manual recommends such as well.

I followed www.akkadia.org/drepper/dsohowto.pdf . Drepper seems to be fine
with the use of pragmas in internal headers.

> There are also other sources in Modules/* that use '__attribute__ ((visibility ("hidden")))'.  Namely ctypes and zlib.

They do, but for a tiny amount of functions. mpdecimal.h, which is internal
as far as _decimal.so is concerned, also needs to be changed. There you have
something like 200 lines of

[...]
void mpd_qrescale(mpd_t *result, const mpd_t *a, mpd_ssize_t exp, const mpd_context_t *ctx, uint32_t *status) Py_HIDDEN;
void mpd_qrescale_fmt(mpd_t *result, const mpd_t *a, mpd_ssize_t exp, const mpd_context_t *ctx, uint32_t *status) Py_HIDDEN;
[...],

which increases the size of the diff between the standalone libmpdec and the
one shipped with Python.

Ah, I missed how big of a line range these pragmas are covering when I scanned the patch before.  In that case, I agree with the current patch.

New changeset 24f6c6f3b7bf by Stefan Krah in branch '3.3':
Issue #16745: Hide a couple of symbols by making them local.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/24f6c6f3b7bf

New changeset 51b0a150f8aa by Stefan Krah in branch '3.3':
Issue #16745: Hide symbols in _decimal.so.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/51b0a150f8aa

New changeset ccc372b37fbb by Stefan Krah in branch '3.3':
Issue #16745: The gcc visibility pragma is buggy on OpenIndiana and NetBSD.
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/ccc372b37fbb