[Python-ideas] ctypes and extensions

Stefan Behnel stefan_ml at behnel.de
Sun Aug 28 20:34:11 CEST 2011


Jeremy Sanders, 28.08.2011 12:35:
> Maybe there are cython implementations coming soon available for pypy,
> jython, ironpython, etc...?

There are ports to PyPy and IronPython being written, yes. Not sure if a 
Jython port would be all that competitive, because there is quite some 
overhead involved in the JNI bridge (AFAIR - this may have changed since 
the last time I considered it). But it would still be interesting for many 
projects even with a noticeable performance penalty, I guess.


> These would still have to compile to C code to
> get build time API checking, which is one of the ctypes issues.

Well, the PyPy port actually uses ctypes as a backend for C interaction, so 
it's not really PyPy specific, but it's supposed to work particularly well 
on PyPy.

The IronPython port uses a mixture of C++ and CLR code, but I haven't been 
involved with it in any way. It was written to port NumPy to .NET, and that 
reportedly worked out quite well.

Stefan




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