[pypy-dev] The JVM backend and Jython

[fwierzbicki at gmail.com]

Hi all,

It was nice meeting up with many of you at PyCon!

I've been thinking about the first steps towards collaboration between
the Jython project and the PyPy project. It looks like it isn't going
to be too long before we are all (CPython, PyPy, IronPython, Jython,
etc) working on a single shared repository for all of our standard
library .py code. In my ideal world there would come a day when there
is also no standalone Java code in the Jython project: that is the
shared standard library would contain all of Jython's .py files, and
all of the Java would be generated from PyPy and Jython as a
standalone project would disappear. It is possible that this is too
ambitious, but big goals are more fun, right? In reality even if this
where to get going, I imagine it would be a 10+ year plan :)

So to my question - just how broken is the JVM backend? Are there
workarounds that would allow the Java code to get generated? I ask
because I would like to evaluate the generated Java parser as a
potential replacement for our current ANTLR based parser. It seems
like a nice baby step towards real collaboration since it seems like a
relatively easy place to start. Clearly it would need adjustments to
actually work for Jython - but I'd be able to look into that part. I
don't think I have the time to try to unbreak the translation
though...

-Frank