[IronPython] Questions for Jim....

[Jim Hugunin]

Brian Lloyd wrote: 
> Contribution: I'd really like to contribute to get IP to a
> production-ready release. Contributing builtin-module
> implementations would be right up my alley given my, er,
> copious free time ;) There isn't a public repository at the
> moment, so what is the best way to do that? Email things to
> Jim?

As I said in my recent message to the list, there's no good way to do this
today.  I appreciate these kinds of offers, and coming from the guy who
wrote Python.NET is excellent.  I'll get back to you as soon as I know more.

> "Batteries included" is a catchphrase for CPython, referring to the
> included library of standard modules. While I can divine how to implement
> a 'built-in' module in C# based on the 0.6 code, it looks like we still
> need a way to replicate one of the befefits of the CPython libraries
> (specifically that you can implement a library in Python, at least as a
> prototype, then move it to 'native' code later w/o changing the Python
> interface). That is also probably a key to 'keeping up with the latest
> Python version' for the CLR implementation, since most new library
> module are implemented in Python first. I don't see a way to do that
> currently (but maybe I'm missing something?)

If you take a look at the C# code for the sys module in IronPython, you'll
see a commented-out hack that put my local directories for the Python
standard library and for a development version of modified library code onto
sys.path by default.  When preparing the public release I just ripped this
out because I didn't have time to do anything else.  For experimental
purposes, you could just hack your personal copy of sys to include whatever
path you'd like to play with Python modules on.

> implementation as well. I would argue that getting unittest.py
> (or a managed equivalent) working in the near term should be a
> reasonably high priority (and would also provide the infrastructure
> to better gauge the state of the managed Python runtime as a whole).

I agree with this completely.  unittest.py did run at one intermediate stage
of IronPython's development so that I could start running parts of the
Python regression test suite.  Unfortunately, parrotbench proved a major
distraction and I let that code drift while focusing on other issues.

-Jim