NEWS entries for Argument Clinic refactors should be removed

[Aniketsy]

Bug report

Bug description:

While working on gh-143392 , it was pointed out by @serhiy-storchaka that Argument Clinic related changes are pure refactoring and should not have NEWS entries, since they do not affect behavior.

This issue is to track identifying and removing such NEWS entries.

I’ll look into this and open a PR to remove NEWS entries for Argument Clinic related refactors.

CPython versions tested on:

CPython main branch

Operating systems tested on:

No response

[skirpichev]

The quote:

We usually should not add NEWS entries for Argument Clinic related changes, as they are pure refactoring and should not affect behavior.

So I sugget to revert this change, and open a separate issue for removing NEWS entries for Argument Clinic related changes.

Originally posted by @serhiy-storchaka in #143392 (comment)

That's true. On another hand, in the given example - change might affect performance. Probably that was the reason to include that news entry.

Please provide another example you would like to remove.

[serhiy-storchaka]

Initially there were no any performance benefit from using Argument Clinic. It only generated machine readable signature (not always). It was common to not add NEWS entries for such changes. Then more and more optimization was implemented for Argument Clinic. So there may be a value in a NEWS entry if the conversion led to substantial performance gain, but this should be written explicitly. And not always the difference is significant. Most late conversions were for functions which takes too much time to notice the difference in argument conversion. So, this should be considered on a case-by-case basis. Is there a noticeable speed up? Write about it. No? Remove the entry.

[skirpichev]

I suspect, that reviewer were aware on this and if the news entry survived review - it's usually for reasons. We should have at least one example to start with.

[serhiy-storchaka]

When I reviewed such changes, I usually said to remove the NEWS entry.

You can search for "Clinic" in the NEWS files. These entries which are not directly related to Argument Clinic as a tool are candidates for removal. There were not much of them, I think that most conversions did not add a NEWS entry.

If there is a good cause for a NEWS entry, the NEWS entry should mention this cause, not the conversion itself.

[Aniketsy]

I’ve found 5-6 such entries so far. since there’s still an ongoing discussion about whether these should be removed, I haven’t opened a PR yet. Once there’s a clear decision, I’ll proceed accordingly, check if there are more entries, and open a PR.

[skirpichev]

Just put ONE example in this issue thread.

[Aniketsy]

..

.. date: 2022-07-03-23-13-28
.. gh-issue: 94518
.. nonce: 511Tbh
.. section: Library

Convert private :meth:`!_posixsubprocess.fork_exec` to use Argument Clinic.

[skirpichev]

This example also may affect performance (METH_VARARGS -> METH_FASTCALL).