If you try to use the low-level API, you are probably
not going to call batchStartup()! So, we set batch=False
by default. This means that buildFromTopo() needs to set
it to True, so we add a bit of irritatingly complex machinery
to allow this to happen. The good fallout of this is that
now customConstructor() returns a real subclass, not simply
a constructor function! We also detect errors where people
are incorrectly attempting to give parameters to a lambda
function - since none of our lambdas accept parameters!!

Note that this is a bit like functools.partial for classes -
it would be nice if functools had a true subclassing function.