> Also, option 1 is virtually equivalent to the state of the _ast module prior to the recent changes except that the symbols are in a shared object instead of the binary or libpython. The advantage here is not moving them out of the shared object, is making them having static storage.

What I'm not yet clear on: when is that shared object is initialized and destroyed?

> Would that impact performance considerably?
> Also, adding them into a module that needs access through Python had a bootstrap problem

Only for PyCF_ONLY_AST, which is, AFAIK, not used by the interpreter itself.