PyPy 1.3: Stabilization

Hello.

We’re please to announce release of PyPy 1.3. This release has two major improvements. First of all, we stabilized the JIT compiler since 1.2 release, answered user issues, fixed bugs, and generally improved speed.

We’re also pleased to announce alpha support for loading CPython extension modules written in C. While the main purpose of this release is increased stability, this feature is in alpha stage and it is not yet suited for production environments.

Highlights of this release

• We introduced support for CPython extension modules written in C. As of now, this support is in alpha, and it’s very unlikely unaltered C extensions will work out of the box, due to missing functions or refcounting details. The support is disable by default, so you have to do:

  import cpyext
  

  before trying to import any .so file. Also, libraries are source-compatible and not binary-compatible. That means you need to recompile binaries, using for example:

  python setup.py build
  

  Details may vary, depending on your build system. Make sure you include the above line at the beginning of setup.py or put it in your PYTHONSTARTUP.

  This is alpha feature. It’ll likely segfault. You have been warned!

• JIT bugfixes. A lot of bugs reported for the JIT have been fixed, and its stability greatly improved since 1.2 release.

• Various small improvements have been added to the JIT code, as well as a great speedup of compiling time.

Cheers, Maciej Fijalkowski, Armin Rigo, Alex Gaynor, Amaury Forgeot d’Arc and the PyPy team