pyvm -- faster python

[Roger Binns]

"Paul Rubin" <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote in message news:7xpsvymlse.fsf at ruckus.brouhaha.com...
> "Roger Binns" <rogerb at rogerbinns.com> writes:
> What kind of stuff is in the existing Python C library that couldn't
> be reimplemented or retargeted pretty easily?  Most of it is either
> wrappers for standard C functions (system calls), stuff that shouldn't
> be in C in the first place (the Python compiler and interpreter), etc.

Some examples are gui toolkits (eg wxPython), SSL (eg M2Crypto, pyopenssl)
and database (pysqlite, APSW).  These aren't in the shipped with Python
library but are widely used.

> I hope that PyPy will replace CPython once it's solid enough.  Trying
> to stay backwards compatible with the legacy C API doesn't seem to me
> to be that important a goal.  Redoing the library may take more work
> than the Prothon guy was willing to do for Prothon, but PyPy has more
> community interest and maybe can attract more resources.

You don't have to stay backwards compatible.  It is best to provide
some sort of way of using the old extensions even if it is suboptimal
(eg some sort of mapping shim).  The extensions can later be improved,
but if there is no simple way of recompiling and running then it will
take a long time for all the extensions to get ported.

I already get burnt out on the matrix of CPython versions and different
platforms.  Adding another interpretter would make life even harder
for extension authors.

Roger