Python for embedded devices?

[Chris Mellon]

On Nov 19, 2007 11:17 AM, Malte Forkel <malte.forkel at berlin.de> wrote:
> I would like to use Python on a router, an Edimax BR-6104K,  running OpenWrt (http://www.openwrt.org). While I probably won't need most of the fancier stuff in Python, serial I/O and threads should be supported.
>
> The router is based on the ADM5120P, has 2MB of flash and 16MB of RAM, so the version of Python 2.5.1 that is part of OpenWrt is probably a litte to big.
>

You can reduce the size of the Python shared library considerably by
removing builtin modules, especially the built-in cjk codecs (I just
built without them on windows and reduced the size to 1.5 megs, down
from 2.5). That may or not be enough to get the size into useful range
for you.

This device may not really be suitable for Python - with so much more
RAM than flash, it seems that you're supposed to have a tiny kernel
and that most of the ram will be used for runtime data structures,
rather than for executable code. Even a very minimal Python library
will require a fair amount of space for .pyc files.