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

[Mark Dufour]

>First the good news: ShedSkin (SS) more or less works on Windows. After
>patching gc6.5 for MinGW, building it, and testing it on WinXP with
>some succuess, and after patching my local copy of SS, I can get the
>test.py to compile from Python to C++, and it seems that I can get
>almost all the unit tests in unit.py to pass.

Thank you so much for your efforts! I will try to download your
patches this afternoon on a roommate's Windows computer, and try to
see if I can fix the remaining tests.

>Moreover, and since the GC system you used only works in "recent
>versions of Windows", it follows that this solution will not work in
>all versions. I tested  it on Win98 and both GC tests and SS's unit.py
>tests crash; although SS can still seem to compile the tests to C++.

Thanks!! Since adding GC support took about 10 lines of C++ code, I
guess it won't be hard to switch to a different system.. I'll try and
see if I can add support for a version that works with Win98..

BTW if anyone is interested in running Shed Skin under OSX.. I got
this comment on my blog (http://shed-skin.blogspot.com)

(why doesn't everybody just run Gentoo? :P)

>Wow, very cool. Congratulations!
>
>Here's what I had to do to get it working on the Mac (OS X 10.4):
>
>1. Install the garbage collector from
>http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/
>
>2. Add #include <cmath> above #include <vector> in builtin_.hpp
>
>3. Change makelib to: g++ -dynamiclib -o libss.dylib builtin_.cpp
sets_.cpp >random_.cpp math_.cpp copy_.cpp -lgc -lm
>
>4. Edit ss to use the appropriate path
>
>5. Use python 2.4 instead of the version 2.2 or 2.3 that comes with
OS X (in my >case, I just had to put /usr/local at the start of my
path)
>
>6. Run ./ss test.py
>
>7. Compile the resulting cpp file with: g++ -L. test.cpp -lss -lgc
>
>8. Run ./a.out and watch in awe.


thanks!
mark.