Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations

From	Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.python
Subject	Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations
References	(1 earlier) <mailman.2924.1344062061.4697.python-list@python.org> <501cff63$0$29978$c3e8da3$5496439d@news.astraweb.com> <mailman.2930.1344079082.4697.python-list@python.org> <7x1ujmabs9.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <mailman.2940.1344099318.4697.python-list@python.org>
Date	2012-08-04 11:18 -0700
Message-ID	<7x1ujm1pwu.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> (permalink)
Organization	Nightsong/Fort GNOX

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Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> writes:
>> C is pretty poor as a compiler target: how would you translate Python
>> generators into C, for example?
> Depends. If you have CPython available, that'd be a straight forward
> extension type.

Calling CPython hardly counts as compiling Python into C.

> For the yielding, you can use labels and goto. Given that you generate
> the code, that's pretty straight forward as well.

You're going to compile the whole Python program into a single C
function so that you can do gotos inside of it?  What happens if the
program imports a generator?

>> How would you handle garbage collection?
> CPython does it automatically for us at least. 

You mean you're going to have all the same INCREF/DECREF stuff on every
operation in compiled data?  Ugh.

> Lacking that, you'd use one of the available garbage collection
> implementations,

What implementations would those be?  There's the Boehm GC which is
useful for some purposes but not really suitable at large scale, from
what I can tell.  Is there something else?

> or provide none at all.

You're going to let the program just leak memory until it crashes??

> you shouldn't expect too much of a performance gain from what the
> platform gives you for the underlying implementation. It can optimise
> the emulator, but it won't see enough of the Python code to make
> anything efficient out of it. Jython is an example for that.

Compare that to the performance gain of LuaJIT and it starts to look
like something is wrong with that approach, or maybe some issue inherent
in Python itself.

> You can get pretty far with static code analysis, optimistic
> optimisations and code specialisation.

It seems very hard to do reasonable optimizations in the presence of
standard Python techniques like dynamically poking class instance
attributes.  I guess some optimizations are still possible, like storing
attributes named as literals in the program in fixed slots, saving some
dictionary lookups even though the slot contents would have to still be
mutable.

Thread

On-topic: alternate Python implementations Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2012-08-04 06:15 +0000
  Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2012-08-04 16:34 +1000
    Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2012-08-04 10:54 +0000
      Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Stefan Krah <stefan-usenet@bytereef.org> - 2012-08-04 13:18 +0200
        Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-04 08:59 -0700
          Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> - 2012-08-04 18:55 +0200
            Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-04 11:18 -0700
              Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> - 2012-08-04 21:06 +0200
                Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-04 13:43 -0700
                Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> - 2012-08-04 23:24 +0200
              Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations MRAB <python@mrabarnett.plus.com> - 2012-08-04 20:24 +0100
          Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2012-08-05 00:54 +0000
            Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-04 18:38 -0700
              Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2012-08-05 02:19 +0000
                Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations John Nagle <nagle@animats.com> - 2012-08-06 22:57 -0700
              Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> - 2012-08-05 07:37 +0200
            Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> - 2012-08-04 23:09 -0400
      Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> - 2012-08-04 13:32 +0200
  Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> - 2012-08-04 08:40 +0200
    Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2012-08-04 07:49 +0000
      Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> - 2012-08-04 11:10 +0200
        Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Thomas Rachel <nutznetz-0c1b6768-bfa9-48d5-a470-7603bd3aa915@spamschutz.glglgl.de> - 2012-08-04 14:51 +0200
          Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> - 2012-08-04 15:53 +0200
            Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Ulrich Eckhardt <ulrich.eckhardt@dominolaser.com> - 2012-08-08 10:29 +0200
          Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> - 2012-08-04 16:03 +0200
      Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-08-04 11:05 +0100
      Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> - 2012-08-04 12:59 +0200
      Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-08-04 19:24 +0100
        Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Temia Eszteri <lamialily@cleverpun.com> - 2012-08-04 11:34 -0700
        Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au> - 2012-08-06 01:21 +1000
      Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Zero Piraeus <schesis@gmail.com> - 2012-08-04 14:42 -0400
      Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Zero Piraeus <schesis@gmail.com> - 2012-08-04 14:56 -0400
      Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> - 2012-08-05 07:27 -0700
  Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Tim Roberts <timr@probo.com> - 2012-08-04 13:07 -0700
  Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations jwp <james.pye@gmail.com> - 2012-08-04 15:05 -0700
  Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Jürgen A. Erhard <jae+python@jaerhard.com> - 2012-08-05 01:25 +0200
  Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> - 2012-08-05 07:46 +0200
  Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> - 2012-08-05 09:51 +0200
  Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Jürgen A. Erhard <jae+python@jaerhard.com> - 2012-08-05 14:28 +0200
  Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations alex23 <wuwei23@gmail.com> - 2012-08-05 20:40 -0700
    Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> - 2012-08-06 08:21 +0200
  Re: On-topic: alternate Python implementations Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> - 2012-08-06 08:46 +0200
  Alternate Python extensions (was alternate Python implementations) rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2012-08-06 21:23 -0700
    Re: Alternate Python extensions (was alternate Python implementations) Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml@behnel.de> - 2012-08-07 07:09 +0200

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