[pypy-dev] bootstrapping issues

[David Ascher]

holger krekel wrote:

>Bootstrapping will be a hot topic for Minimal Python 
>itself.  We probably first want to use the CPython 
>development environemnt to get going.  We probably 
>want to base it on the python-2.3 cvs tree.
>
>There is the idea of not using make/configure/automake
>but a simple understandable debuggable (read: python based) 
>build environment.  IOW words the number of dependencies 
>for building Minimal Python should also be minimal.
>
May I suggest scons (http://www.scons.org/)?  It's what I would use in a 
new project today.

>For avoiding the need of C-coded system modules  
>there is interest to code a generalization of 
>the "struct" module which allows *calling* functions at
>the C-level.  This general C-"Extension" will be 
>system-dependent. The gateway code between the "machine"
>and python probably needs to be coded in assembler:
>You can't "construct" a C-function call within 
>ANSI-C.  Both Microsoft and Apple have proprietary
>solutions for Java.  (these insights courtesy of 
>Jens-Uwe Mager and Christian Tismer who endorse 
>the idea). 
>
I will point people towards the code in Mozilla that does similar 
things, called xptcall:

    http://www.mozilla.org/scriptable/xptcall-faq.html

It's XPCOM centered, but many of the ideas and the assembly code for 
mac, win32 and os2, and a bunch of unix variants 
(http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/xpcom/reflect/xptcall/src/md/unix/) 
is there.

Robin already mentioned libffi as well.

Looking forward to participating in this very interesting project,

-- david