Hi all! The next PyPy sprint will be held in the Computer Science department of Heinrich-Heine Universitaet Duesseldorf from the 30th of October to the 5th of November 2006. Topics and goals ---------------- The topics of the sprints are not fixed yet. We will progress on the subjects that we are currently working on, while giving a special priority to any topic that "non-core" people find interesting. There are many topics that could fit both category :-) Here are some examples: * Just-In-Time work. Two sub-topics: - write and/or optimize a machine-code backend (we have 386 only so far) - work on turning simple interpreters into JIT compilers (we cannot do this for the whole of the PyPy interpreter yet, we're getting there small step by small step). * Optimization of core Python data types, making full use of PyPy's flexible architecture and python-implemented (and then translated) type system. (We have already various dict and str implementations.) * "Next-step stuff" that will requires some thinking and design: - distribution (where a single program runs on multiple machines) - persistence (save an "image" of a running program, or a part of it) - security (in many possible senses of the word) * Working on py.test testing tool: - py.test recently grew some distribution features which are still rough around the edges and could use improvement - there are some more ideas for features of py.test around, like adding profiling capabilities (and more) * Work on the PyPy build tool: There are some plans to provide a tool that allows one to flexibly configure PyPy and to also request builds from a set of build servers. If there is interest there could be work in this area. * and as always, there is the topic of implementing or completing core extension modules (e.g. socket...). This is hacking with a mix of ctypes and RPython. Location -------- The sprint will (probably) take place in a seminar room of the geography department (which is getting assimilated by the cs department and is below it). It is in the building 25.12 of the university campus. For travel instructions see http://stups.cs.uni-duesseldorf.de/anreise/esbahn.php Registration ------------ If you'd like to come, please subscribe to the `pypy-sprint mailing list`_ and drop a note about your interests and post any questions. More organisational information will be send to that list. We'll keep a list of `people`_ which we'll update (which you can do so yourself if you have codespeak commit rights). .. _`pypy-sprint mailing list`: http://codespeak.net/mailman/listinfo/pypy-sprint .. _`people`: http://codespeak.net/pypy/extradoc/sprintinfo/ddorf2006b/people.html Cheers, Carl Friedrich Bolz & the PyPy team