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1) wrt _POSIX_THREAD_ATTR_STACKSIZE, I'll look at that
(though I note its absence from the existing code...)

2) PTHREAD_STACK_MIN on FreeBSD is 1k, which seemed grossly
inadequate for Python (my impression is that 20-32k is a
fairly safe minimum for Python).  In principle I don't have
a problem 
with relying on PTHREAD_STACK_MIN, except for trying to play
it safe.  Any further thoughts on this?

I'm also putting together an environment variable only
version of the patch, with a view to getting that in first,
and reworking this patch to work on top of that.

Thanks for the comments.