[Python-Dev] Documenting [C]Python's Internals (original) (raw)

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Thu May 20 06:01:16 CEST 2010

On 5/19/2010 6:13 PM, Yaniv Aknin wrote:

Hi,

I wanted to let python-dev know about a series of articles about CPython's internals I'm publishing under the collective title "Guido's Python"* (http://tech.blog.aknin.name/tag/guidos-python/).

This link has all post concatenated together in reverse order of how they should be read. The tags link returns the same page. Does your blog software allow you to make a master post and update with new links as available?

Three

articles already were published already, more are planned (mainly focused on CPython/py3k, but comparisons with other implementations may also be covered; we'll see). So far I've done an introduction/whirlwind tour of PyMain and a two-article in-depth review of the (new-style) object system.

I'm sharing this with you (and hope you care) due to three reasons, probably in escalating importance: (a) Maybe some of python-dev's readers would be interested (possibly the newer and more silent members).

(b) Maybe my scales are wrong, but I was a bit surprised by the number of readers (>20,000 in the past two weeks); I wouldn't want to mislead such a reader base and would be happy if a veteran here would be interested in aiding by technically proofing the material (shan't be too hard I hope, feel free to contact me directly if qualified and interested).

I would if I were qualified, but I an mot. One way to get people to help with details is to publish mistakes. This happens all the time on python-list ;-). Pre-review would be nice though.

(c) While the content is currently geared to be blog-oriented, if it's found worthy by the group I'd be delighted to formulate it into something more 'reference-material-ish' and give it back to the community. I found no centrally organized CPython-internals material other than bits and pieces (descrintro, eclectic blog posts, lectures, C-API reference, etc), and I hope maybe something like this could be featured more officially on python.org <http://python.org>, with the relevant 'this is subject to change' disclaimers (can be a document for new contributors, for pure Python programmers who're just interested, or for whatever we decide).

People have asked for an internals-doc since I started over a decade ago. A coherent CPython3.2 Internals would be nice to have with the 3.2 release next December or so, whether or not it was made 'official'.

Terry Jan Reedy

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