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Clarifying or just repeating Guido here:

+ Binary compatibility is important.  It's better on Unix 
than it appears <wink> -- while you'll get a warning if you 
run an old 1.5.2 extension with 2.2 today and without 
recompiling, it will almost certainly work anyway.  So in 
the case of macros that expanded to a private API function 
before, that private API function must still exist, but the 
macro needn't expand to that anymore (nor even *be* a macro 
anymore).  _PyObject_Del is a particular problem cuz it's 
even documented in the C API manual -- there simply wasn't 
a public API function before that did the same thing and 
could be used as a function designator.  You're making life 
better for future generations.

+ Casts on tp_free slots are par for the course, 
because "destructor" has an impractical signature.  I'm 
afraid that can't change either, so the casts stay.

+ Fred and I agreed to add PyObject_Del to the "minimal 
recommended API", so, for the next round of this, feel 
wholly righteous in leaving existing PyObject_Del calls 
alone.

If anything's unclear, hit me.