So, as per discussion here, I have prepared a patch (to the maintenance branch of 2.3, to start with) which adds unit tests to highlight these issues, and fixes them in copy.py. This patch should go in the maintenance of 2.3 and 2.4, but in 2.5 a different approach based on new special descriptors for special methods is envisaged (though keeping compatibility with classic extension types may also require some patching to copy.py along the lines of my patch).
Problem: to write unit tests showing that the current copy.py misbehaves with a classic extension type, I need a classic extension type which defines __copy__ and __deepcopy__ just like /F's cElementTree does. So, I made one: a small trycopy.c and accompanying setup.py whose only purpose in life is checking that instances of a classic type get copied correctly, both shallowly and deeply. But now -- where do I commit this extension type, so that the unit tests in test_copy.py can do their job...?
Right now I've finessed the issue by having a try/except ImportError in the two relevant unit tests (for copy and deepcopy) -- if the trycopy module is not available I just don't test how its instances behave under deep or shallow copying. However, if I just commit or send the patch as-is, without putting trycopy.c and its setup.py somewhere, then I'm basically doing a fix without unit tests to back it up, from the point of view of anybody but myself.
I do not know what the recommended practice is for this kind of issues, so, I'm asking for guidance (and specifically asking Anthony since my case deals with 2.3 and 2.4 maintenance and he's release manager for both, but, of course, everybody's welcome to help!). Surely this can't be the first case in which a bug got triggered only by a certain behavior in an extension type, but I couldn't find precedents. Ideas, suggestions, ...?
Alex
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