Code Sprints, Contractors, and Commits: PyPy in 2016

by Molly deBlanc on December 1, 2016

This series covers new developments and exciting projects taken on by Conservancy member projects. To learn more about Conservancy member projects, or the non-profit infrastructure support and services offered by the Conservancy, check out Conservancy’s Projects page!

Thanks to the generous support of donors and contributors, PyPy contracted Ronan Lamy at the beginning of June to help move forward work on Py3k. Lamy has been a Pypy core developer since 2012, and his work in refactoring old code has been invaluable to the project.

PyPy is an implementation of Python, one of the most popular programming languages in the world. It’s fast and light without sacrificing features available in CPython and other systems used to execute programs written in Python.

The Py3k project is important for the future of PyPy. Since the publication of Python 3, coders, developers, and organizations have been tackling the technical and social challenges of updating from Python 2. For PyPy, supporting Python 3 means supporting the Python community—those wanting to use PyPy will be able to work with projects using Python 2 and Python 3. In addition to donations received through the Conservancy’s fiscal sponsorship, a $200,000 award from the Mozilla Foundation to Baroque Software is helping to make a Python 3.5 PyPy a reality.

Over June, Lamy made hundreds of commits to PyPy—creating clean code, fixing translations, increasing testing capabilities, and expanding Windows functionality. Rather relentless, he combed through commits and contributions, chasing down everything from unnecessarily hacky code to serious problems. Without the financial support of donors, this work would likely remain unfinished. Lamy spoke at PyCon UK this September, where he talked about the current state of PyPy.

Currently, PyPy is a “good and… usable drop-in replacement for CPython” for 2.7, and during 2017 that usability should extend to Python 3.3 and 3.5. In order to achieve this goal, Python 3.5 will continue to be a major priority for PyPy in the months ahead, as well as JIT code generation. Additionally, there are a number of “side projects,” like RevDB.

Interested in getting involved with PyPy? There are lots of ways to contribute to the project—check out the documentation for details! You can also help them along by donating to the project.

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Tags: pypy, Year In Review 2016, Member Projects