The script below fails with an assertion error with python 3.11a5+ (current trunk) when build with --with-pydebug:

# BEGIN OF FILE
class String(str):
    __slots__ = ()

name = String("hello")

class Bag:
    pass

o = Bag()
setattr(o, name, 42)

# END OF FILE

Error output:

% /tmp/py311/bin/python3 -Xdev str.py                                                                                                                 (master)pyobjc-8
Assertion failed: (PyUnicode_CheckExact(name)), function _PyObject_StoreInstanceAttribute, file dictobject.c, line 5426.
Fatal Python error: Aborted

Current thread 0x0000000100a98580 (most recent call first):
  File "/Users/ronald/Projects/pyobjc-8/pyobjc-core/str.py", line 10 in <module>
zsh: abort      /tmp/py311/bin/python3 -Xdev str.py

A hard crash seems wrong to me, and I'm not convinced yet that checking that the type of the attribute name is exactly string is correct.

Found while debugging a crash in PyObjC's testsuite, PyObjC uses a subclass of str to represent Objective-C strings.  Using such instances works fine in practice, but causes a crash in a --with-pydebug build due to this assertion.

a8b9350964f43cb648c98c179c8037fbf3ff8a7d is the first bad commit
commit a8b9350964f43cb648c98c179c8037fbf3ff8a7d
Author: Mark Shannon <mark@hotpy.org>
Date:   Wed Oct 13 14:19:34 2021 +0100

    bpo-45340: Don't create object dictionaries unless actually needed (GH-28802)

    * Never change types' cached keys. It could invalidate inline attribute objects.

    * Lazily create object dictionaries.

    * Update specialization of LOAD/STORE_ATTR.

    * Don't update shared keys version for deletion of value.

    * Update gdb support to handle instance values.

    * Rename SPLIT_KEYS opcodes to INSTANCE_VALUE.

New changeset 03c2a36b2bd2d4469160d1607619ee144175d753 by Mark Shannon in branch 'main':
bpo-46903: Handle str-subclasses in virtual instance dictionaries. (GH-31658)
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/03c2a36b2bd2d4469160d1607619ee144175d753

Ronald, does PR 31658 fix your issue?

Your PR fixed the issue for me.

The PR introduced some deprecation warnings in tests.

./python -Wall -m test test_unicode               
0:00:00 load avg: 1.54 Run tests sequentially
0:00:00 load avg: 1.54 [1/1] test_unicode
/home/karthikeyan/stuff/python/cpython/Lib/test/test_unicode.py:3058: DeprecationWarning: Please use assertEqual instead.
  self.assertEquals(o.name, 1)
/home/karthikeyan/stuff/python/cpython/Lib/test/test_unicode.py:3060: DeprecationWarning: Please use assertEqual instead.
  self.assertEquals(list(o.__dict__), [name])
/home/karthikeyan/stuff/python/cpython/Lib/test/test_unicode.py:3067: DeprecationWarning: Please use assertEqual instead.
  self.assertEquals(o.name2, 3)
/home/karthikeyan/stuff/python/cpython/Lib/test/test_unicode.py:3069: DeprecationWarning: Please use assertEqual instead.
  self.assertEquals(list(o.__dict__), [name, name2])

== Tests result: SUCCESS ==

1 test OK.

Total duration: 952 ms
Tests result: SUCCESS