Merged the int/long unification branch, by very crude means (sorry Thomas!).
I banged on the code (beyond what's in that branch) to make fewer tests fail;
the only tests that fail now are:
  test_descr -- can't pickle ints?!
  test_pickletools -- ???
  test_socket -- See python.org/sf/1619659
  test_sqlite -- ???
I'll deal with those later.
diff --git a/Modules/_sre.c b/Modules/_sre.c
index a24f286..d402965 100644
--- a/Modules/_sre.c
+++ b/Modules/_sre.c
@@ -2688,8 +2688,7 @@
 
     for (i = 0; i < n; i++) {
         PyObject *o = PyList_GET_ITEM(code, i);
-        unsigned long value = PyInt_Check(o) ? (unsigned long)PyInt_AsLong(o)
-                                              : PyLong_AsUnsignedLong(o);
+        unsigned long value = PyLong_AsUnsignedLong(o);
         self->code[i] = (SRE_CODE) value;
         if ((unsigned long) self->code[i] != value) {
             PyErr_SetString(PyExc_OverflowError,
@@ -2763,6 +2762,10 @@
 {
     Py_ssize_t i;
 
+    if (index == NULL)
+	/* Default value */
+	return 0;
+
     if (PyInt_Check(index))
         return PyInt_AsSsize_t(index);
 
@@ -2913,7 +2916,7 @@
 {
     Py_ssize_t index;
 
-    PyObject* index_ = Py_False; /* zero */
+    PyObject* index_ = NULL;
     if (!PyArg_UnpackTuple(args, "start", 0, 1, &index_))
         return NULL;
 
@@ -2936,7 +2939,7 @@
 {
     Py_ssize_t index;
 
-    PyObject* index_ = Py_False; /* zero */
+    PyObject* index_ = NULL;
     if (!PyArg_UnpackTuple(args, "end", 0, 1, &index_))
         return NULL;
 
@@ -2986,7 +2989,7 @@
 {
     Py_ssize_t index;
 
-    PyObject* index_ = Py_False; /* zero */
+    PyObject* index_ = NULL;
     if (!PyArg_UnpackTuple(args, "span", 0, 1, &index_))
         return NULL;