[Python-Dev] Open CPython VM for type information (original) (raw)

Kay Schluehr kay.schluehr at gmx.net
Wed Dec 13 08:32:45 CET 2006

Dear Python developers,

while the JVM is opened to support dynamically typed languages [1] I wonder if the CPyVM could not show more openness to statically typed languages? Hereby I don't think that much about arbitrary languages for the CPyVM but sublanguages like RPython which are "static enough" to be compilable into extension modules [2].

However creating C extension modules from Python code is not really the standard way I do think Python source should be handled. Instead I think about a more direct VM support like the JVM does, that provides opcodes like iload, fstore etc. Besides this I don't expect one canonical approach for these type information to be feeded into the CPyVM. There are type inferencer like rtyper for PyPy, Psycos continous bytecode monitoring and also other approaches are possible that use type feedback. Finally optional type declarations are also an issue; however I would like to see language design discussions being separated ( -> Python 3000 ) and focus on general APIs for compiler extensions / plugs that deal with type information ( the architecture ) and VM implementation issues.

Thanks, Kay

[1] http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=292 [2] http://codespeak.net/pypy/dist/pypy/doc/extcompiler.html

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