First release of Shed Skin, a Python-to-C++ compiler.

[Carl Friedrich Bolz]

Hi Paul!

Paul Boddie wrote:
> Carl Friedrich Bolz wrote:
>>>. there is no reason why the pypy project can't have a .NET architecture
>>>instead of the java-like arrangement I assume it has now
>>Sorry, I can't really follow you here. In what way does PyPy have a
>>Java-like arrangement?
> 
> I imagine that this remark was made in reference to the just-in-time
> compilation techniques that PyPy may end up using, although I was under
> the impression that most CLR implementations also use such techniques
> (and it is possible to compile Java to native code as gcj proves).

Well, PyPy is still quite far from having a JIT build in. Plus the 
JIT-techniques will probably differ quite a bit from Java _and_ the CLR :-).

> But on the subject of LLVM: although it seems like a very interesting
> and versatile piece of software, it also seems to be fairly difficult
> to build; my last attempt made the old-style gcc bootstrapping process
> seem like double-clicking on setup.exe. Does this not worry the PyPy
> team, or did I overlook some easier approach? (Noting that a Debian
> package exists for LLVM 1.4 but not 1.5.)

We are not that worried about this since

a) building LLVM is not _that_ bad (you don't need to build the 
C-frontend, which is the really messy part) and

b) the LLVM-backend is one of the more experimental backends we have 
anyway (in fact, we have discovered some bugs in LLVM with PyPy 
already). Since the C backend is quite stable we are not dependent 
solely on LLVM so this is not too big a problem. Note that this doesn't 
mean that the LLVM backend is not important: it's the only other backend 
(apart from the C one) that can succesfully translate the whole PyPy 
interpreter.

Cheers,

Carl Friedrich