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> ... and the module init function could create and register a
> different module first, and ...
Actually, this *does* happen, the PIL module is written this way.
And I don't agree with the "best effort" argument. If there is a slight chance that this does not work, we'll have to fix it sooner or later.
But please check this import lock thing: if _PyImport_AcquireLock and _PyImport_ReleaseLock are always called around extension module initialization, then we don't have to worry about other threads; and nested calls are already handled by the "oldimportcontext" variable in your patch.