[pypy-commit] pypy release-2.2.x: Progress

[arigo]

Author: Armin Rigo <arigo at tunes.org>
Branch: release-2.2.x
Changeset: r67979:49bfc678ad16
Date: 2013-11-12 14:25 +0100
http://bitbucket.org/pypy/pypy/changeset/49bfc678ad16/

Log:	Progress

diff --git a/pypy/doc/release-2.2.0.rst b/pypy/doc/release-2.2.0.rst
--- a/pypy/doc/release-2.2.0.rst
+++ b/pypy/doc/release-2.2.0.rst
@@ -1,9 +1,87 @@
 =======================================
-PyPy 2.2 - xxx
+PyPy 2.2 - Incrementalism
 =======================================
 
-GC!
+We're pleased to announce PyPy 2.2, which targets version 2.7.3 of the Python
+language. This release main highlight is the introduction of the incremental
+garbage collector, sponsored by the `Raspberry Pi Foundation`_.
 
+This release also contains several bugfixes and performance improvements. 
 
-numpypy module was removed in favor of an external numpy fork
+You can download the PyPy 2.2 release here:
+
+    http://pypy.org/download.html
+
+We would like to thank our donors for the continued support of the PyPy
+project. We showed quite a bit of progress on all three projects (see below)
+and we're slowly running out of funds.
+Please consider donating more so we can finish those projects!  The three
+projects are:
+
+* Py3k (supporting Python 3.x): the release PyPy3 2.2 is imminent.
+
+* STM (software transactional memory): a preview will be released very soon,
+  as soon as we fix a few bugs
+
+* NumPy: the work done is included in the PyPy 2.2 release. More details below.
+
+.. _`Raspberry Pi Foundation`: http://www.raspberrypi.org
+
+What is PyPy?
+=============
+
+PyPy is a very compliant Python interpreter, almost a drop-in replacement for
+CPython 2.7. It's fast (`pypy 2.2 and cpython 2.7.2`_ performance comparison)
+due to its integrated tracing JIT compiler.
+
+This release supports x86 machines running Linux 32/64, Mac OS X 64, Windows
+32, or ARM (ARMv6 or ARMv7, with VFPv3).
+
+Work on the native Windows 64 is still stalling, we would welcome a volunteer
+to handle that.
+
+.. _`pypy 2.2 and cpython 2.7.2`: http://speed.pypy.org
+
+Highlights
+==========
+
+* Our Garbage Collector is now "incremental".  It should avoid almost all pauses due
+  to a major collection taking place.  Previously, it would pause the program (rarely)
+  to walk all live objects, which could take arbitrarily long if your process is using
+  a whole lot of RAM.  Now the same work is done in steps.  This should make PyPy
+  more responsive, e.g. in games.  There are still other pauses, from the GC and the JIT,
+  but they should be on the order of 5 milliseconds each.
+
+* The JIT counters for hot code were never reset, which meant that a process running
+  for long enough would eventually JIT-compile more and more rarely executed code.
+  Not only is it useless to compile such code, but as more compiled code means more
+  memory used, this gives the impression of a memory leak.  This has been tentatively
+  fixed by decreasing the counters from time to time.
+
+* NumPy has been split: now PyPy only contains the core module, called ``_numpypy``.
+  The ``numpy`` module itself has been moved to ``https://bitbucket.org/pypy/numpy``.
+  You need to install it separately in a virtualenv with
+  ``pip install git+https://bitbucket.org/pypy/numpy.git``.
+
+* improvements to non-inlined calls
+
+* sys.set_trace is now JITted (think coverage)
+
+* faster json
+
+* improvements in buffer copying
+
+* tk is supported (XXX was already in pypy 2.1 it seems?? maybe not correctly packaged?)
+
+* We finally wrote all the missing ``os.xxx()`` functions.  There are a lot of strange
+  ones that nobody ever heard about, except those who really need them.
+
+* numpy C API
+
+
+ the core module is included in PyPy 2.2, but you must now install
+  an external fork of numpy from https://bitbucket.org/pypy/numpy
+
+
+removed in favor of an external numpy fork
 at https://bitbucket.org/pypy/numpy