commit 5bb5d6d0113f6bbd72966a5c1f3e6d40c2e9c8fd
Author: Grisha Trubetskoy <grisha@modpython.org>
Date:   Tue Dec 1 22:07:50 2015 -0500

    Do not import site.py for the main interpreter. Fixes #46.

diff --git a/src/mod_python.c b/src/mod_python.c
index 8c33c04..7e0ef1e 100644
--- a/src/mod_python.c
+++ b/src/mod_python.c
@@ -775,8 +775,15 @@ static int python_init(apr_pool_t *p, apr_pool_t *ptemp,
         /* disable user site directories */
         Py_NoUserSiteDirectory = 1;
 
-        /* initialze the interpreter */
+        /* Initialze the main interpreter. We do not want site.py to
+         * be imported because as of Python 2.7.9 it would cause a
+         * circular dependency related to _locale which breaks
+         * graceful restart so we set Py_NoSiteFlag to 1 just for this
+         * one time. (https://github.com/grisha/mod_python/issues/46)
+         */
+        Py_NoSiteFlag = 1;
         Py_Initialize();
+        Py_NoSiteFlag = 0;
 
 #ifdef WITH_THREAD
         /* create and acquire the interpreter lock */
@@ -2649,7 +2656,7 @@ static void PythonChildInitHandler(apr_pool_t *p, server_rec *s)
      * problems as well. Thus disable cleanup of Python when
      * child processes are being shutdown. (MODPYTHON-109)
      *
-    apr_pool_cleanup_register(p, NULL, python_finalize, apr_pool_cleanup_null);
+     * apr_pool_cleanup_register(p, NULL, python_finalize, apr_pool_cleanup_null);
      */
 
     /*