Python for small systems (ucLinux)

[Jeffery D. Collins]

David Brown wrote:

>"Jeffery D. Collins" <jcollins at boulder.net> wrote in message
>news:mailman.1045094152.16037.python-list at python.org...
>  
>
>>I don't think it would be too difficult to use Pippy as a starting
>>point.  The
>>footprint reduction logic involves the heavy use of macros -- all
>>settable in
>>config.h.  It might be easier to just check out the same version from the
>>python repository, diff  the src/{Python, Object, ...} directories and
>>    
>>
>merge
>  
>
>>the non-palm stuff.   I'll have to look more carefully at the code to
>>get a better
>>idea.  If you decide to use Pippy, contact me offline with questions.
>>
>>BTW, have you tried to build python without (most of) the extension
>>modules and
>>then use freeze to select only the necessary modules?  IIRC, you can
>>even turn
>>off unicode support - there is a macro for this - as well as complex
>>    
>>
>number
>  
>
>>support.  You might want to try this first; it may be good enough.
>>
>>    
>>
>
>I have not yet tried anything with it - I'm expecting the ucLinux board
>soon, and then I can try out things.  At the moment, I am just trying to see
>if this is something people have done before.  But your post gives me a good
>indication of how I can get started, comparing Pippy to the main python
>source to see what changes I would want to keep, and what I would want to
>leave out - especially in config.h.
>
>As another poster asked, is it possible to cut out the compiler?  I would
>imagine this would make a big difference to the size of the system -
>assuming that I can make the .pyc files on another host (am I right in
>thinking that .pyc files are not compatible between major python versions,
>but they are between minor versions?  And would endian changes be an issue
>for the byte code - my host (PC) is little-endian, but the target is
>big-endian?)
>  
>
It is possible.  This is done in Pippy and significant footprint and 
heap space was saved.
I haven't looked at doing this in recent versions, however.  This 
requires that the .pyc files
be compiled on another host (they are stored in a platform-independent 
format).  For sake of
consistency,  I always compiled python sources with the same python 
major/minor version
on the desktop.

-- 
Jeffery Collins (http://www.boulder.net/~jcollins)