Surface multiphase init

[oddbookworm]

Since disabling the GIL on singlephase initialization requires the use of PyUnstable_* calls, I would like to make use of multiphase initialization whenever possible. Here is a tentative implementation for an initial port for pygame.Surface. Note that this is just for moving over to multiphase initialization and has nothing to do with free-threading. This should not affect current behavior in any way to the best of my understanding

[damusss]

Hi Andrew. Could you explain to me what this singlephase/multiphase initialization and subinterpreters thing is about? Or if it's easier, where can I properly read about it? I'm uninformed about the topic.

[oddbookworm]

Hi Andrew. Could you explain to me what this singlephase/multiphase initialization and subinterpreters thing is about? Or if it's easier, where can I properly read about it? I'm uninformed about the topic.

Here’s the pep for multi phase
single phase docs
multi phase docs

the reason I want to make this change is because of free threading. Disabling the GIL at a module level in single phase requires the use of unstable API, which can (and probably will) change on us at some arbitrary Python minor version update. Disabling the GIL at a module level in multi phase is as simple as defining a slot

[oddbookworm]

subinterpreters is another topic. The only reason it’s brought up here is because multiphase makes some assumptions that need to be handled for it

[oddbookworm]

Properly handling subinterpreters should be left off for a future pull

[ankith26]

LGTM, thanks for the PR! 🎉

I'm still not a 100% clear on all refcounting aspects of this PR, but these are module level objects that are supposed to be immortal anyways, so overcounting references should practically be fine :)

[oddbookworm]

I'm still not a 100% clear on all refcounting aspects of this PR, but these are module level objects that are supposed to be immortal anyways, so overcounting references should practically be fine :)

Which part is confusing?
Feel free to ping me on discord if that's easier

[Starbuck5]

I'm also uncertain about the ref counting in this PR, with PyModule_AddObjectRef.

Reading over the multiphase init documentation it mentioned PyModule_AddObjectRef, so maybe Andrew you used it because it was mentioned there?

[ankith26]

LGTM, thanks for the PR 🎉