From: Sean M. <sea...@pr...> - 2004-12-30 13:41:11
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The PSF has published its list of projects to recieve grant funding: http://www.python.org/psf/grants/ Brian Zimmer will manage the project Moving Jython Forward <http://www.python.org/psf/grants/Jython_PSF_Grant_Proposal.pdf> Sean |
From: Samuele P. <ped...@bl...> - 2004-12-30 15:45:07
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Sean McGrath wrote: > The PSF has published its list of projects to recieve grant funding: > > http://www.python.org/psf/grants/ > > Brian Zimmer will manage the project Moving Jython Forward > <http://www.python.org/psf/grants/Jython_PSF_Grant_Proposal.pdf> > Good news! I was aware of the proposal because Brian Zimmer informed that he was going to submit such a proposal, and asked whether it was OK with me. I commented on some early drafts he sent to me. Recently he told me that he got a positive answer from the PSF. Although because of the amount of work put into that, by various people we would have got a new release, this should enable to get 2.4 feature parity and lay the foundation for a more solid development future for Jython. As hinted by some recent message, I have completed most of the plumbing necessary to support new-style classes, but that work still is not checked in. This will happen likely next week or before mid January. About new-style support: *) New-style-classness and subclassing need to be enabled separately for each builtin type, this is done for some basic types but needs to be done for rest. This is mostly done through code-generation tools that I'm also going to check-in. (They need a tiny bit more work that I will put in before checking them in.) Because this is done through tools it does not represent a huge amount of work left. *) Java classes and new-style classes cannot be mixed right now, this class x(object,java.lang.Object): ... will not work. This can be done, but right now it would have required more work and especially design work and involved subtle backward compatibility problems. This is left maybe for the future to pick up. - * - Right now I'm juggling between packing my stuff, moving my digital life and dev env to a new machine that I will bring with me to Sweden and sorting these things out. My main focus is going to shift to PyPy. PyPy apart from working to produce a new generation standalone Python execution engine (or better potentially family of engines), will experimentally target as hosting platform also Java or java bytecode, although a full intepreter is not in the immediate goals. I will probably post something about how this can possibly help Jython short-term and mean for Jython long-term. At the very least I will still hang out in Jython land, to answer questions about the codebase (especially obscure bits) and help design-wise. I had a long online conversation with Brian Zimmer about the work ahead for him. The first new release will likely still have a 2.2 baseline, since 2.3 for example, because of bools, requires java integration related design and work. After that, targetting directly a 2.4 baseline could make sense. Brian Zimmer will likely post updated plans and hint at where volunteer contributions may help. - * - About evolution management: A lot of the work is going to be about reaching mostly feature parity with Python new versions, fixing bugs and polishing and simplifying the current codebase. But there are things that have (especially java integration related) no CPython counterpart. Jython is a Python implementation, which means philosophy-wise that a kitchen-sink approach which simply adds things as long as they "work" is not suitable. One area that needs improvement is java importing, this will also involve the changes entailed by PEP 302. I already thought to some extent what kind of changes can be useful. So I will try to converge and help on a design with Brian Zimmer. Brian Zimmer needs forward motion especially because he agreed on a plan with and has to report to the PSF. So he needs to be able to proceed as he sees fit. As I said, as long as viable, I will try to help him and converge with him design-wise. For third-party new ideas with no CPython counterpart, unfortunately currently we don't have a sufficient number of active CVS committers to make a voting system work. So such ideas need to be discussed here; if they come or came directly in form of patches on SF they probably need a second-opinion, and if they are not minor a discussion here should be initiated. I may have a loud opinion about them which I hope Brian Zimmer will consider. If an idea in its essence is worthwhile but the design is lacking, but no alternative design comes in in reasonable time, an active committer can decide to apply it anyway. I hope this does not happen. regards. |