[LLVMdev] OT: Python on LLVM

[Paul Melis]

Collin Winter wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 8:20 AM, Paul Melis <llvm at assumetheposition.nl> wrote:
>   
>> Hi,
>>
>> Slightly off-topic (as it's not directly about using or developing LLVM):
>>
>> http://code.google.com/p/unladen-swallow/wiki/ProjectPlan
>>
>> "Our long-term proposal is to replace CPython's custom virtual machine
>> with a JIT built on top of LLVM, while leaving the rest of the Python
>> runtime relatively intact."
>>
>> Just curious, has anyone here heard more about this project?
>>     
>
> You found it just as I was typing an introduction email :) I'm the
> tech lead for Unladen Swallow, and we just announced our plans
> yesterday at the PyCon VM summit. Our intention is to replace
> CPython's eval loop with a JIT based on LLVM. We're still fairly
> early-on in our work, focused on just getting a basic, slow
> implementation working on top of LLVM. We'll start making it fast in
> Q3 and beyond. I'm sure we'll be back with lots of questions, and
> hopefully contributions :)
>
> Our mailing list is unladen-swallow at googlegroups.com, and we're happy
> to answer any questions about our project plan on that list.
>
>   
>> P.S. If I'd heard about this just 6 days later (e.g. Aprils Fools) I
>> wouldn't have believed it, especially with that project name. There's just
>> something weird about suddenly finding a project that's obviously been
>> going on for some time (the roadmap is very detailed and they have initial
>> working code), while I spend quite some time on Python and LLVM related
>> lists and never saw a reference to it.
>>     
>
> We didn't want to announce when all we had was vapor. Our 2009Q1
> release is a collection of tweaks to CPython (to give a quick
> performance boost to existing applications), and we've just now begun
> on the LLVM work. We still have a long way to go.
>   
I just reread my PS and want to apologize for sounding so blunt. I think
it's a great project and hope you can achieve all your ambitious goals!

Regards,
Paul