I am writing a user c module where I need to have a python callback function passed to a function that is in a user c module and I would like to know if there is a way to keep the the callback function from getting garbage collected if it goes out of scope.

as an example..

import some_user_c_module

def some_function():

    def callback_function():
        # do callback function code here
        pass

    some_user_c_module.register_callback(callback_function)

some_function()

# some code that ends up triggering the callback to be made

the issue is that once some_function exists the callback_function object gets collected by the GC even tho it has been passed to another function and stored in C code to be used at a later time. If there a way to stop callback_function from being marked for deletion and being collected by the GC? I would think that there is some kind of a reference counter that is able to be incremented if a function gets passed and it would need to be decremented if the c object holding reference to it gets deleted or the function no longer used.

any help with this would be greatly appreciated.