[3.12] GH-101291: Add warning to "what's new" that PyLongObject internals have changed. (GH-107388) (#107392)

miss-islington · markshannon · web-flow · commit 5f7862dc1f0b · 2023-07-31T10:16:00.000-07:00
(cherry picked from commit 1ee605c) Co-authored-by: Mark Shannon <mark@hotpy.org>
diff --git a/Doc/whatsnew/3.12.rst b/Doc/whatsnew/3.12.rst
@@ -1867,6 +1867,17 @@ Porting to Python 3.12
   subinterpreter that they don't support (or haven't yet been loaded in). See
   :gh:`104668` for more info.
 
+* :c:struct:`PyLongObject` has had its internals changed for better performance.
+  Although the internals of :c:struct:`PyLongObject` are private, they are used
+  by some extension modules.
+  The internal fields should no longer be accessed directly, instead the API
+  functions beginning ``PyLong_...`` should be used instead.
+  Two new *unstable* API functions are provided for efficient access to the
+  value of :c:struct:`PyLongObject`\s which fit into a single machine word:
+
+  * :c:func:`PyUnstable_Long_IsCompact`
+  * :c:func:`PyUnstable_Long_CompactValue`
+
 Deprecated
 ----------
 
