On the minus side, the JIT only works on x86 and x86_64, on the plus
side, since it's 100% API compatible, it can be used as a _xxx
speedup module relatively easy.

Do people have opinions?

The main concern for re is not speed, but functionality. The Python re
module needs to grow a number of features, and correct a number of bugs.
So 100% compatible is actually not good enough. 95% compatible (with
the features added and the bugs fixed) would be better.

OTOH, sharing the re code with PyPy would be a desirable goal, as would
be writing the re code in Python (although SRE already implements
significant parts in Python).

We did not reimplement those parts in RPython, they're still in python (so the sre engine does not accept regex, but instead the lower-level description, etc. etc.)

As a speedup module, it's uninteresting - we want to simplify maintenance, not complicate it. So this can only work if it replaces
SRE.

Regards,
Martin