[pypy-dev] Re: [pypy-svn] r26432 - pypy/dist/pypy/doc

[Armin Rigo]

Hi Lawrence,

On Thu, Apr 27, 2006 at 02:09:57PM +0200, Lawrence Oluyede wrote:
> > +* Rewrite one or several CPython extension modules to be based on **ctypes**
> > +  (newly integrated in Python 2.5): this is generally useful for Python
> > +  developpers, and it is now the best path to write extension modules that are
> > +  compatible with both CPython and PyPy.  See for example
> > +  http://wiki.python.org/moin/CodingProjectIdeas/PygameOnCtypes .  A related
> > +  idea is to provide efficient numeric arrays (as in numeric/numpy/numarray)
> > +  in this way.
> 
> How a SoC (2 months longer) task can be? I'd like to apply for this
> kind of project but I'd like to know more about it too. We can discuss
> about 5, or 10 or so modules that PyPy needs? Or it's up to the
> student to choose them?

I would expect the Pygame-on-ctypes proposal to be a full two-months
work by itself, but tackling smaller modules might indeed allow 5 or
more of them to be done.  About the modules choice, yes, it's mostly up
to the student.  There are many built-in CPython modules that we are
missing, and thus having them would be nice, but on the other hand some
non-built-in modules are just cooler and more widely used (I'm a Pygame
fan :-).

For reference, the built-in modules that we have (or at least started to
work on) are in http://codespeak.net/svn/pypy/dist/pypy/module or in
http://codespeak.net/svn/pypy/dist/pypy/lib if they've been
reimplemented purely at app-level.  Looking at the list of CPython 2.4
modules, I find a lot of small or medium useful built-in modules that
PyPy is missing -- a personal selection in alphabetical order:

    * _curses
    * _ssl
    * bz2
    * fcntl
    * mmap
    * os        (i.e. posix/nt, partially done)
    * readline  (a topic by itself: write or find existing readline
                 replacements in pure Python, also useful for CPython)
    * select
    * signal
    * termios
    * time      (partially done)
    * zipimport
    * zlib

Feel free to propose any choice, from this list or not, here or on
#pypy.


A bientot,

Armin.