I'm wondering how to move forward with this issue.  Might it make sense to 
break the current monster patch into a series of more-easily reviewed 
patches?  I was thinking of something like:

 - patch 1 (Python code): remove all uses of cmp from std. lib. and tests
 - patch 2 (C code): remove all uses of tp_compare from Modules and 
Objects
 - patch 3 : rename tp_compare to tp_reserved in all Modules and Objects 
(should be a very simple patch, but touches a lot of files)
 - patch 4 : fix docs, and look for any other loose ends that need
   cleaning up.

Here's patch 1: remove uses of cmp from library and tests (and also from 
Tools/unicode/makeunicodedata.py).  It involves essentially no user-
visible changes.  (At least, assuming that users aren't trying to access 
e.g., UserString.__cmp__ directly.)

The patch is against py3k.  All tests pass on my machine with this patch 
applied.

Anyone interested in reviewing this?