[pypy-dev] about breaking RPython, RCTypes

[Christopher Armstrong]

On 6/20/07, Martijn Faassen <faassen at startifact.com> wrote:
> There are currently, as far as I can see it, two reasons to use RPython
> for CPython extensions:
>
> a) benefit from performance gains by rewriting your CPython code into
> RPython. This is what we want to do with the page template interpreter.
> In case of language implementations, this might lead to the ability to
> use other PyPy technology later (such as JIT generation and so on). Some
> others might purely be interested in performance though and aren't
> implementing a language.
>
> b) better ways to write extensions that use C libraries in CPython. The
> typical Pyrex use case, though it can do the former as well. This would
> use RCTypes.

While this is perhaps only an instance of your first use case
(although not really performance-oriented), using RPython code as a
CPython extension module is how I was planning on Safelisp being used
(a small safe language written in RPython, meant for embedding). I can
imagine a similar situation for PyPy's Python interpreter itself, so
one could "sneak" PyPy-using Python code into their production system
by importing the PyPy Python interpreter as a CPython module.


-- 
Christopher Armstrong
International Man of Twistery
http://radix.twistedmatrix.com/
http://twistedmatrix.com/
http://canonical.com/