I've messed up the issue number, sorry!

Looks like this hack was added in ~2006. Some research of existing code to see if anything still relies on it is warranted before merging, it seems very unlikely. if so we'd want a deprecation period.

Quoting the original issue:

I've never seen this before, so I went and searched for this on the internet:https://cs.github.com/?scopeName=All+repos&scope=&q=_use_broken_old_ctypes_structure_semantics_

I've done a minimal research. I was not able to find any references to it.
Even Google does not have any significant references:https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&q=_use_broken_old_ctypes_structure_semantics_&nfpr=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiXxoHT_av7AhUQuIsKHcpYAfAQvgUoAXoECAUQAg&biw=1280&bih=726&dpr=2

I don't feel qualified in this specific module and its history to make an educated decision here. However, deprecation period is always a good idea 👍