[pypy-dev] Extended goals

[holger krekel]

[Jeremy Hylton Tue, Sep 23, 2003 at 09:50:59PM -0400]
> On Tue, 2003-09-16 at 11:46, Christian Tismer wrote:
> > [many more binaries than expected]
> > 
> > > btw, i forgot all about it: this is mainly the Zope-Database (ZODB) 
> > > which is independent from Zope and has quite some parts written 
> > > in C, for performance reasons ASFAIK.  I'd say they are
> > > applying a common technique with high-level-languages:
> > > rapidly prototype in Python and reimplement the 
> > > speed-relevant parts in C (and maintain it).  
> > > It's rather obvious how PyPy could help here :-)
> > 
> > Absolutely. Zope can reverse its path and move
> > its core back to where it belongs: Python.
> 
> In fact, Zope3 started with all Python implements of ZODB.  A few parts
> of it have been rewritten in C over time.  Performance is the main goal,
> but another noteworthy reason to use C is to reduce memory usage.  Pure
> Python objects consume a lot of memory.  C extension types can be fairly
> small.  (datetime is a good example.)
> 
> Does pypy have a plan for memory or is performance the primary goal?

allowing to have a small memory footprint is certainly a goal. 
PyPy aims to make it a lot easier to make decisions regarding
space<->time tradeoffs. So Zope3 could e.g. use their own completely 
compliant python interpreter optimized for memory consumption. 

Do the parts of Zope3 that got rewritten in C still have a complete
python counterpart? Do the unit-tests run on both of them? 

cheers,

    holger