[Python-Dev] AtheOS port

[Octavian Cerna]

On 8 May 2002, Martin v. [iso-8859-1] L=F6wis wrote:

> From the Web page (www.atheos.cx, which appears to be down at the
> moment - ask Google for a cached copy):
>
> # AtheOS is a free desktop operating system under the GPL
> # license. AtheOS currently run on Intel, AMD and other compatible
> # processors and support the Intel Multi Processor architecture. I
> # have seen quite a few anouncements of "promising" OSes with "great
> # potential" during the development of AtheOS. The problem is that
> # when I follow the links I normally find a description of the
> # concept, a floppy-bootloader written in assembly, and not much
> # else. AtheOS is a bit more mature, and is already running quite a
> # lot of software. This server for example is running AtheOS. The HTTP
> # server is a AtheOS port of Apache, and most of the content is
> # generated by the AtheOS port of PHP3 and perl.The native AtheOS file
> # system is 64-bit and journaled.
>
> The rationale for the patch as given by its author is that AtheOS
> apparently comes with a Python 1.5.2 binary, and that he wanted to see
> whether he could update it to the current Python.
>
> I'm copying Octavian Cerna to see whether he can come up with a good
> reason why his patch should be included into Python - I was suggesting
> to include because I saw no reason to reject it.

Hi all,

One of Python's (and many other programming languages) goal is to be portab=
le
on many systems.

Quoting from http://www.python.org/doc/Summary.html:
"The Python implementation is portable: it runs on many brands of
UNIX, on Windows, DOS, OS/2, Mac, Amiga...  If your favorite system
isn't listed here, it may still be supported, if there's a C compiler
for it.  Ask around on comp.lang.python -- or just try compiling
Python yourself."

And that's what I did. I tried compiling Python by myself on AtheOS which
was an unsupported platform, and it didn't compile. So I just thought it
would be nice to have Python working on this system too.

AtheOS is a free OS, similar to BeOS, mostly POSIX-compliant, and mature
enough to run lots of Unix/GNU software with minimal/no changes.
Examples are GCC, Emacs, Perl, Ruby.
It's not as popular as other OSes like Linux, *BSD or BeOS.
If Python runs on many POSIX-like systems, then why should AtheOS be an exc=
eption?

Porting Python to AtheOS was almost straightforward, I only had to add nati=
ve
dynamic loading and threading in order to take full advantage of Python.
I had a fully working Python on AtheOS (passing all tests), and I wanted to
share the changes, so I submitted the patch to the SourceForge tracker.
Thank you Martin for your support.

I hope that integrating this port will attract Python developers to AtheOS,
and AtheOS developers to Python.
It will help increase both Python and AtheOS developer communities.


Best Regards,
Octavian Cerna

Please excuse my bad English.