On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 3:12 PM, Stefan Behnel <stefan...@behnel.de> wrote: > Armin Rigo, 14.02.2012 13:13: >> the main problem is that the RPython-to-C translation that we >> do is not just a one-format traduction. We need to tweak the >> intermediate code in various ways depending on various settings. The >> way it is tweaked really depends on these settings in a way that >> cannot be captured just by C macros. (If it could, we might have >> written the whole project in C instead of RPython in the first place.) >> You would end up with a version of the Cython C code that only works >> on *some* kind of PyPy, like using the minimark GC, without any JIT >> support, and without sandboxing support. (Just to add an example, I >> could also say "and without stackless support", but this is no longer >> true nowadays because we no longer rely on a transformation for >> stackless.) > > Hmm, if that is so, how would you ever want to make PyPy bidirectionally > interface with anything at all? How does ctypes even work in PyPy? Is it > just that you're lucky that ctypes can be controlled completely from within > PyPy and doesn't let any internals leak into the outside world? Then how is > rffi supposed to do it better? And how are you planning to export numpypy > buffers to non-PyPy code? > > It's one thing to export low-level data and simple C functions etc. to > external code. However, the open C-API of CPython is a serious part of its > success story. It's not just legacy code that uses it, it continues to be > an important part of the platform. If PyPy can't have such an API, that's a > serious drawback of the architecture. > > Stefan
I think CPython C API is a serious part of it's success because it's "good enough for a lot of cases" not because it's necessary for it's success. In my opinion a decent FFI (not ctypes, I mean a decent one) and better performance would eliminate this need completely. From our perspective then, CPython C API is just legacy. _______________________________________________ pypy-dev mailing list pypy-dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pypy-dev
