ABI break?

[Daniel Burrows <dburrows@debian.org>]

  Hi all,

  Would anyone object if I applied some patches that break the ABI?
I'm thinking particularly of #470035, it of the impressive blocked-by
list, but perhaps also #470210 (if it's still relevant, I'll have to
check that first).

  I'd also like to discuss #260446 again: this is an occasional source
of annoyance, and I can't imagine that it would really break anyone to
fix it.  At the very least, could we start issuing dire warning about
stray backslashes in quoted strings to prepare for a future transition?
(maybe giving people a "safe-haven" in the form of some special interim
syntax)

  Daniel