[Python-Dev] Some notes about MicroPython from an observer (original) (raw)

Daniel Holth dholth at gmail.com
Wed Jun 4 12:41:05 CEST 2014

micropython is designed to run on a machine with 192 kilobytes of RAM and perhaps a megabyte of FLASH. The controller can execute read-only code directly from FLASH. There is no dynamic linker in this environment. (It also has a UNIX port).
However it does include a full Python parser and REPL, so the board can be programmed without a separate computer as opposed to, say, having to upload bytecode compiled on a regular computer.
It's definitely going to be a subset of Python. For example, func.name is not supported - to make it more micro?
They have a C API. It is much different than the CPython C API.
It mas more than one code emitter. A certain decorator causes a function to be compiled to ARM Thumb code instead of bytecode.
It even has an inline assembler than translates Python-syntax ARM assembly (to re-use the same parser) into machine code.