[pypy-dev] Fork lib and pythonpath?

[logistix]

First off, apologies if this shows up as a dupe post.  I posted via
gmane.org about 6 hours ago and it never showed up.


This brief interactive session scares me a little.

---START CONSOLE TEXT---

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\grant>cd
\python22\lib\site-packages\pypy\interpreter

C:\Python22\Lib\site-packages\pypy\interpreter>python interactive.py
Python 2.2.2 (#37, Oct 14 2002, 17:02:34) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] in pypy
PyPyConsole / TrivialObjSpace
>>> import sys
>>> sys.path
['', 'C:\\Python22\\lib\\site-packages\\Pythonwin',
'C:\\Python22\\lib\\site-pac
kages\\win32', 'C:\\Python22\\lib\\site-packages\\win32\\lib',
'C:\\Python22\\li
b\\site-packages', 'c:\\python22\\DLLs', 'c:\\python22\\lib',
'c:\\python22\\lib
\\lib-tk', 'c:\\python22']
>>>

---END CONSOLE TEXT---

I'm thinking we should fork the whole lib directory into pypy and have
the
interpreter's pythonpath point there, bypassing Cpython's pythonpath
entirely.

I'm trying to get the pure-python bytecode compiler package in order.
The
python distribution already goes 80% of the way.  I've got a plugin
replacement for parser.pyd.  But where do I stick it so it's found
before
the pyd? I also want to write a interim version of tokenizer.py.  The
current version uses regexes.  This is the way we should ultimately do
it,
but a pure python DFA would be nice while dependancies are being worked
out
(although slow as hell).  I could just drop that in the lib directory,
but
then we're running against a patched version of CPython.

The only other alternative is to insert something into pythonpath before
any
of the standard entries so we can stub stuff in there.  Still, if the
ultimate goal is to have a standalone pypy interpreter, we're going to
need
to fork sooner or later.  Sooner will allow us to flush out some
unanticipated dependancies in the early stages.

Of course the downside of doing this is that someone will need to
monitor
CPython's lib directory and port patches across.  It might be a little
time
consuming, but for now the patches on python-commit should be able to be
applied easily.