There are many ways to write a solution of the original issue. You can just add a number of "Py_DECREF(bytes)" (path_converter.patch), or add new variable to_cleanup2 (path_converter-v2.patch), or reuse to_cleanup (path_converter-to_cleanup.patch), or clean ups bytes (path_converter-bytes.patch). All these ways look equivalent.

The issue mentioned in msg283754 is more severe. It can be solved by making path->object referring an original argument (but some code checks the type of path->object), or making path->object owning a reference.

It seems to me that path->narrow can be not initialized for str path on Windows.