[pypy-dev] Re: Type inference documentation

[holger krekel]

On Sat, Feb 19, 2005 at 21:19 +0000, Michael Hudson wrote:
> Michael Hudson <mwh at python.net> writes:
> 
> > Well, certainly.  I don't know how soon, though.  It's also one of
> > the most mind bending parts of the project currently.
> 
> To make my point the way I originally intended too (sigh): If I was to
> work on lowering the bar to entry of the annotator, currently I would
> work on making it less incomprehensible before working on
> documentation.

Some people even think that before making it less incrompehensible
and writing documentation we should actually make it work :-) 

Nevertheless i would hope that some things can be said about
annotation (our jargon for type inference) that would not be 
heavily outdated so soon.  In fact, since the Vilnius sprint 
in November annotation seems to be relatively stable and we
are shifting efforts to make the interpreter/StdObjectSpace 
behave in a way that allows the current annotation to work. 

Btw, in the just re-merged "interpapp" branch we wrestled
quite a bit with the interactions between interpreter level
code and application level code that are kind of a mine field
for type inference, especially exposing interp-level functions
at application level (like all the descriptors).  Here it also
seems to make sense to document the new cleaned up way of doing
app/interp interactions, including the new "LazyModule" 
mechanism for the sys and builtin module which are now
realized as packages whose name bindings get resolved lazily. 
(have a look into pypy/module/builtin and sys2). 

cheers, 

    holger