Right. It would be possible to implement the GIL as a readers-writer lock, where thread state includes a counter for the number of frames in the call stack tha

Right. It would be possible to implement the GIL as a readers-writer lock, where thread state includes a counter for the number of frames in the call stack that are within libraries not marked nogil. (Let's call these non-nogil libraries "GIL-dependent".) When the count goes from zero to one, the thread attempts to upgrade its reader lock to a writer lock. When its count goes from one to zero, the thread downgrades its lock from writer to reader. That way, there's at most one thread executing within GIL-dependent code at a time. Furthermore, if there is a thread executing within GIL-dependent code, all of the other threads are blocked waiting to acquire the GIL (in reader mode if they're nogil-safe, and writer mode if they're GIL-dependent.) As now, any thread holding the GIL in writer mode would need to drop the GIL when attempting to acquire any other lock (and re-acquire immediately afterward). To prevent starvation, one would presumably need a mechanism similar to periodic GC safepoints where nogil-safe threads still check if any thread is waiting to acquire the GIL in writer mode.