Python Front-end to GCC

[victorgarcianet at gmail.com]

On Sunday, October 20, 2013 3:56:46 PM UTC-2, Philip Herron wrote:
> I've been working on GCCPY since roughly november 2009 at least in its
> concept. It was announced as a Gsoc 2010 project and also a Gsoc 2011
> project. I was mentored by Ian Taylor who has been an extremely big
> influence on my software development carrer.

Cool!

> Documentation can be found http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/PythonFrontEnd.
> (Although this is sparse partialy on purpose since i do not wan't
> people thinking this is by any means ready to compile real python
> applications)

Is there any document describing what it can already compile and, if possible, showing some benchmarks?

> But at least to me there is at least to me an un-answered question in
> current compiler implementations.  AOT vs Jit.
> 
> Is a jit implementation of a language (not just python) better than
> traditional ahead of time compilation.
> 
> What i can say is ahead of time at least strips out the crap needed
> for the users code to be run. As in people are forgetting the basics
> of how a computer works in my opinion when it comes to making code run
> faster. Simply need to reduce the number of instructions that need to
> be executed in order to preform what needs to be done. Its not about
> Jit and bla bla keyword llvm keyword instruction scheduling keyword
> bla.

Maybe a less agressive tone (and a lot more research before going into sweeping statements that do nothing to further your own project) could result in a better level of discussion?
 
> I could go into the arguments but i feel i should let the project
> speak for itself its very immature so you really cant compare it to
> anything like it but it does compile little bits and bobs fairly well
> but there is much more work needed.

Can you compare it to Nuitka (http://nuitka.net/), ShedSkin (http://nuitka.net/) and Pythran (http://pythonhosted.org/pythran/) when you think it's mature enough? These projects have test suits you can borrow to chart you progress along the full-language support road.

It'd be good to find a place for your project on http://compilers.pydata.org/ , as soon as you better describe its workings.

> There is nothing at steak, its simply an idea provoked from a great
> phd thesis and i want to see how it would work out. I don't get funded
> of paid. I love working on compilers and languages but i don't have a
> day job doing it so its my little pet to open source i believe its at
> least worth some research.

It's very interesting indeed. Congratulations and thank you for your work.

Victor