@Terry: This is part of the ongoing effort of issues #16748 and #10967 (and possibly others).  My ultimate goal along those lines is to eradicate support.run_unittest, and this is a step in that direction.

I think there's enough support here to skip python-dev :).

My testing has been limited (by time, mostly) to just a non-verbose run to confirm that nothing errors after the patch.  It seems Serhiy has tested more extensively, though.

@Raymond: May I ask why you removed 3.4 from versions?  Most of the changes like this in individual modules have been made on all open 3.x branches (most that I've been involved in were in the 3.3 maintenance period).  I don't feel strongly enough about making sure this is in 3.4 to argue if you have a good reason, though.

@Serhiy: Thanks for testing this!  The reference counting in individual modules has been dying a slow death, long ago replaced by regrtest's -R option.  For the modules with base classes included in testing, I'm inclined to either leave them as patched (since they don't actually add any tests and their overhead is minimal) or remove them from the patch and deal with them in a new issue; I'm leaning toward the first option.  For the wait tests, I would rather remove them from the patch and deal with them separately.

@Terry, Raymond, Michael, David, and Serhiy: thanks for the support!