is it possible to use Mercurial without C extensions (pure Python)?

[Matt Mackall]

On Mon, 2008-12-29 at 22:23 +0100, Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:
> Hi, 
> 
> This is for the Python DVCS PEP again. 
> - http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dg7fctr4_40dvjkdg64
> 
> Is it possible to run a fully functional (if slow) Mercurial without any C 
> extensions so that we only need a Python interpreter to use it? 

Everything that is currently a C extension was at one time pure Python.
All that's needed is a little elbow grease to resurrect the old code and
make its use optional.

My only requirement is that such a fallback not be automatic. When we
first introduced extensions, there were several occasions where the slow
Python variants were quietly ruining benchmarks.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.