[Zope-dev] Parrot

[Andrew Langmead]

On Mar 21, 2005, at 11:59 AM, Alan Milligan wrote:

> I'm not sure that it's necessarily this difficult.  Perhaps it's simply
> a matter of implementing Python's import/dlopen semantics and running
> this C natively on the VM.
>

Take a look at something like

Zope-{version}/lib/Components/ExtensionClass/src

and look at  the "Py{mumble}" functions that get called. To get Zope to  
work under Python, either those classes will need to be written, or  
compatible versions of those that interact with parrot. (which is what  
Fred was asking about whether Parrot supported Python's C API) So faced  
with the choice of re-writing things like ExtensionClass or emulating  
enough of the Python C API to support them, I'd start with writing a  
conversion library.

Some of the replacements would be easy. For example having a  Py_None  
global that can fetch the None object. Things like PyArg_ParseTuple  
look like they map fairly well to  
<http://search.cpan.org/~ltoetsch/parrot-0.1.2/docs/pdds/ 
pdd16_native_call.pod>  Some of them (lets say PyModule_GetDict)  might  
be more difficult. The amount of glue code needed to convert  
ExtensionClass's idea of what the cPython interpreter provides into the  
functionality that the Parrot VM provides will start increasing. (does  
a Parrot module have the equivalent of an embedded dictionary object?)

None of this is a show stopper, but it would take some time to get it  
to work.