[Mobile-sig] Jython (was Re: Competitors - Kotlin)

[David Boddie]

On Wednesday 7. June 2017, Dima Tisnek wrote:

> There was Jython (evaluated Python bytecode "in Java" at runtime) and
> now there's VOC (translates Python bytecode to Java bytecode).

Sorry I'm a bit late replying to this (again). I'm told that Jython doesn't
work that way - it apparently compiles Python source code to Java bytecode at
run-time, but you can perform compilation ahead of time as well.

I just checked it out from https://hg.python.org/jython and built it, then
used it to run the compileall.py tool:

  ./dist/bin/jython dist/Lib/compileall.py

Lots of class files were generated, but no Python bytecode. I wonder if the
class files could be processed by the Android tools to create Dex bytecode.
I'm not familiar enough with the Android toolchain with its Java heritage to
know how to integrate Jython into it. Maybe parts of the VOC toolchain could
be used to do that.

David