[pypy-dev] Does/will pypy support cpython's c extension modules?

[Jean-Paul Calderone]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 11:07:26 -0800, Sean Lynch <seanl at literati.org> wrote:
>Please no. Porting modules to ctypes is well worth the effort because
>then they will work with Jython and IronPython as well as CPython and
>PyPy. IMHO the CPython extension API is the "wrong" way to extend Python
>and has been since the beginning, not least because it assumes
>implementation details of the interpreter like reference counting,
>object layout, etc.
>

If PyPy is to be a practical platform, then it would actually be beneficial
for it to support the CPython extension API.  The API may be crummy and
undesirable in various ways, but it would still help projects moving from
another runtime to PyPy if PyPy could load the extension modules they
depend on until someone ports them to something better.

Whether or not it is a goal for PyPy to be a practical platform right now,
I don't know.  This seems to be what the original poster is interested in,
though, and I assume that if it is not a goal now, it will become one at
some point.

Jean-Paul