23 November 2010
Nuitka needs you - a call for help
Hello everybody,
Update
Python3 support was added, and has reached 3.3 in the mean time. The doctests are extracted by a script indeed. But exception stack correctness is an ongoing struggle.
my Python compiler Nuitka has come a long way, and currently I have little to no time to spend on it, due to day job reasons, so it’s going to mostly stagnate for about 2 weeks from my side. But that’s coming to an end, and still I would like to expand what we currently have, with your help.
Note: You can check the page What is Nuitka? for clarification of what it is now and what it wants to be.
As you will see, covering all the CPython 2.6 and 2.7 language features is already something. Other projects are far, far away from that. But going ahead, I want to secure that base. And this is where there are several domains where you can help:
Python 3.1 or higher
I did some early testing. The C/API changed in many ways, and my current working state has a couple of fixes for it. I would like somebody else to devote some time to fixing this up. Please contact me if you can help here, esp. if you are competent in the C/API changes of Python 3.1. Even if the CPython 3.1 doesn’t matter as much to me, I believe the extended coverage from the new tests in its test suite would be useful. The improved state is not yet released. I would make an release to the person(s) that want to work on it.
Doctests support
I have started to extract the doctests from the CPython 2.6 test suite. There is a script that does it, and you basically only need to expand it with more of the same. No big issue there, but it could find issues with Nuitka that we would like to know. Of course, it should also be expanded to CPython 2.7 test suite and ultimately also CPython 3.1
Exception correctness
I noted some issues with the stacks when developing with the CPython 2.7 tests, or now failing 2.6 tests, after some merge work. But what would be needed would be tests to cover all the situations, where exceptions could be raised, and stack traces should ideally be identical for all. This is mostly only accuracy work and the CPython test suite is bad at covering it.
All these areas would be significant help, and do not necessarily or at all require any Nuitka inside knowledge. You should also subscribe the mailing list (since closed) if you consider helping, so we can discuss things in the open.
If you choose to help me, before going even further into optimization, in all likelihood it’s only going to make things more solid. The more tests we have, the less wrong paths we can take. This is why I am asking for things, which all point into that direction.
Thanks in advance, Kay Hayen