It is true that your proposed feature would provide a way for a programmer to manually resolve the cycle issue; however, the open issue in the pep is how to do this automatically.

But if you hold on to the traceback reference, you should *expect* all those values to persist, so that shouldn't be "surprising".

I repeat my recommendation that you take this to python-ideas for feedback, and then work on a patch if the feedback is positive.

(By the way, I checked with a twisted developer, and what he wanted was a convenient way to manually create traceback objects.)