[pypy-dev] PyPy Sprint Announcement, Duesseldorf 30 Oct - 5 Nov

[Carl Friedrich Bolz]

Hi all!

The next PyPy sprint will be held in the Computer Science department of
Heinrich-Heine Universitaet Duesseldorf from the 30th of October to the
5th of November 2006.

Topics and goals
----------------

The topics of the sprints are not fixed yet.  We will progress on the
subjects that we are currently working on, while giving a special
priority to any topic that "non-core" people find interesting.  There
are many topics that could fit both category :-)  Here are some
examples:

* Just-In-Time work.  Two sub-topics:

  - write and/or optimize a machine-code backend (we have 386 only so
    far)
  - work on turning simple interpreters into JIT compilers (we cannot do
    this for the whole of the PyPy interpreter yet, we're getting there
    small step by small step).

* Optimization of core Python data types, making full
  use of PyPy's flexible architecture and python-implemented (and then
  translated) type system.  (We have already various dict and str
  implementations.)

* "Next-step stuff" that will requires some thinking and design:

  - distribution (where a single program runs on multiple machines)
  - persistence (save an "image" of a running program, or a part of it)
  - security (in many possible senses of the word)

* Working on py.test testing tool:

  - py.test recently grew some distribution features which are still
    rough around the edges and could use improvement

  - there are some more ideas for features of py.test around, like
    adding profiling capabilities (and more)

* Work on the PyPy build tool: There are some plans to provide a tool
  that allows one to flexibly configure PyPy and to also request builds
  from a set of build servers. If there is interest there could be work
  in this area.

* and as always, there is the topic of implementing or completing core
  extension modules (e.g. socket...).  This is hacking with a mix of
  ctypes and RPython.


Location
--------

The sprint will (probably) take place in a seminar room of the geography
department (which is getting assimilated by the cs department and is
below it).  It is in the building 25.12 of the university campus. For
travel instructions see

    http://stups.cs.uni-duesseldorf.de/anreise/esbahn.php

Registration
------------

If you'd like to come, please subscribe to the `pypy-sprint mailing
list`_ and drop a note about your interests and post any questions.
More organisational information will be send to that list.  We'll keep a
list of `people`_ which we'll update (which you can do so yourself if
you have codespeak commit rights).

.. _`pypy-sprint mailing list`:
http://codespeak.net/mailman/listinfo/pypy-sprint
.. _`people`:
http://codespeak.net/pypy/extradoc/sprintinfo/ddorf2006b/people.html



Cheers,

Carl Friedrich Bolz & the PyPy team