some next steps (was: Re: [pypy-dev] Release)

[Ben.Young at risk.sungard.com]

Thanks for the reply Holger

hpk at trillke.net (holger krekel) wrote on 30/08/2005 10:56:01:

> Hi Ben, hi all, 
> 
> On Tue, Aug 30, 2005 at 10:31 +0100, Ben.Young at risk.sungard.com wrote:
> > Congratulations everyone one the release! It looks really good!
> 
> thanks, also for your constant support!
> 
> > So what's the next priority? Speed or more customisability (or both!)?
> 
> we had a brief discussion at the end of the sprint and apart
> from working on the bytecode compiler (which makes the interactive 
> speed appear so slow) we intend to cleanup translation driving
> and various other areas before heading off to the next phases 
> of the project.  Also we currently plan the next sprint in Paris 
> (10th-17th October) which we should announce soon.  It's quite
> likely we are discussing/starting on the next efforts there
> regarding JIT compilation and massive multithreading and
> what not. 
> 
> There also is the ongoing effort of integrating Carl Friedrich's 
> GC code into the actual translated PyPy and improving flexilibity 
> around threading, completing some crucial external functions 
> (like os.listdir) and whatnot. 
> 

Will there eventually be a way for existing c extension modules to talk to 
the generated pypy? Or will people have to reimplement their extensions 
(perhaps using a c-types style notation). I guess the hard bit is making 
it cross-backend compatiable (for instance the way ironpython/jython can 
both automatically see the platform objects)

> Personally, i hope i will find some time to seriously improve
> the testing framework on various levels.  With PyPy, we begin to
> have lots of options and variants in testing our own code
> base, the standard python library's tests as well as testing
> translation targets and variants.  I'd like to implement an
> approach that allows completely peer-driven testing and
> sending of reports to a central site where they can be queried
> according to os/processor/python.  I intend to implement this
> in a PyPy neutral manner so that the numerous other users of 
> py.test can reuse our efforts for their projects.  Additionally, 
> i'd like to have tests become interactively distributable 
> to multiple machines (listed via ssh-account login information) 
> from a single (possibly modified) working copy. 
> 

Have you come up with any solutions to make the annotation/translation 
process a bit less fragile, as it appears a small fix somewhere in the 
code can accidently produce huge amounts of confusion in the annotator. 
Perhaps some "checkpoints" in places in the code, where if an object 
doesn't have a particular annotation then we stop at that point?

> Also, for the EU side of things some of us will need to invest
> time into reporting and writing papers.  We intend to keep
> as much of that work reusable on the website as we have no
> inclination to just produce dead paper. 
> 
> Last but not least we are still looking for sprint places end
> of this and the whole next year.  There appear to be
> possibilities in Istanbul (Turkey), Bern (Switzerland)  and
> Romania but none of these are concrete at this point.  It would
> also already be good to know if there is interest in doing a PyPy
> sprint at Pycon US in the next year.

Thanks for your patience in my incessant questioning!

Cheers,
Ben

> 
> cheers, 
> 
>     holger
>