Compiled to bytecode like java?

[Joel May]

First, I'm not really familiar with Python, esp under the hood.

I'm looking for a script language to embed in a device.  I have a home-grown
proprietary script language available, but it's rather primitive.  The nice
thing about it is that the interpreter is very simple and small.  The source
code is compiled to a byte code.  The byte code would be dumped on to the
device and interpreted there.

I'd like to use a more powerful language.  Apparently, embedding Python in
your C app is easy and well documented.

But I need to know:
* What would be downloaded to the device?  Would it be the actual source
code, which the interpreter would then parse and run?  Or is it a byte-code
like Java?  This would have a smaller interpreter and run faster.
* How complex is the Python source code?  If I port it to an
python-unsupported processor (a dsp), would I kill myself trying to get it
to work?  How many lines of source code are we talking about here?

Thanks in advance
Joel