first release of PyPy

[Kay Schluehr]

Torsten Bronger wrote:
> Hallöchen!
>
> Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> writes:
>
> > Torsten Bronger <bronger at physik.rwth-aachen.de> writes:
> >
> >> Please could somebody explain to us non-CS people why PyPy could
> >> have speed features CPython can't have?
> >
> > Does the one-word answer "compiler" explain enough?
>
> No, just more questions.  ;-)
>
> What's supposed to be compiled?  Only PyPy itself or also the
> programs it's "interpreting"?

There is no "PyPy itself". The distinction bewteen interpreter-level
code and application-level code is nothing but a set of coding
conventions which are usefull but not necessary to let the type
inferencer ( "annotator" in PyPy slang ) terminate definitely on a set
of machine-translateable types in case of interpreter-level code. At
least the interpreter should not interpret it's own code after an
inititalisation phase. Currently type annotated application level code
will still be compiled into bytecodes but it is not only possible to
JIT and to specialize it by means of Psyco, but it should be possible
to compile parts of it into native code like we do today with
C-extensions.

It's hard for me to recognize a fixedpoint in this process or a clear
boundary between interpreter and application level code. This is IMO a
pure heuristic not a categorial distinction but is also clear there
will ever be a remaining gap due to the dynanism of the language. I
think a lot of research understanding this distinction will follow in
the next years.

As a conclusion: with PyPy Python will still be interpreted, but a
large corpus of Python code may be compiled into native code of the
underlying machine. 

Regards,
Kay