Grumpy is a Python to Go source code transcompiler and runtime that is intended to be a near drop in replacement for CPython 2.7. The key difference is that it compiles Python source code to Go source code which is then compiled to native code, rather than to bytecode. This means that Grumpy has no VM. The compiled Go source code is a series of calls to the Grumpy runtime, a Go library serving a similar purpose to the Python C API (although the C API is not directly supported).
The simplest way to execute a Grumpy program is to use make run, which wraps a
shell script called grumprun that takes Python code on stdin and builds and runs
the code under Grumpy. All of the commands below are assumed to be run from the
root directory of the Grumpy source code distribution:
echo "print 'hello, world'" | make run
For more complicated programs you'll want to compile your Python source code to
Go using grumpc (the Grumpy compiler) and then build the Go code using go build. First, write a simple .py script:
echo 'print "hello, world"' > hello.py
Next, build the toolchain and export some environment variables that make the toolchain work:
make
export GOPATH=$PWD/build
export PYTHONPATH=$PWD/build/lib/python2.7/site-packages
Finally, compile the Python script and build a binary from it:
tools/grumpc hello.py > hello.go
go build -o hello hello.go
Now execute the ./hello binary to your heart's content.
There are three main components and depending on what kind of feature you're writing, you may need to change one or more of these.
Grumpy converts Python programs into Go programs and grumpc is the tool
responsible for parsing Python code and generating Go code from it. grumpc is
written in Python and uses the ast module to accomplish parsing.
The grumpc script itself lives at tools/grumpc. It is supported by a number of Python modules in the compiler subdir.
The Go code generated by grumpc performs operations on data structures that
represent Python objects in running Grumpy programs. These data structures and
operations are defined in the grumpy Go library (source is in the runtime
subdir of the source distribution). This runtime is analogous to the Python C
API and many of the structures and operations defined by grumpy have
counterparts in CPython.
Much of the Python standard library is written in Python and so it "just works" in Grumpy. These parts of the standard library are copied from CPython 2.7 (possibly with light modifications). For licensing reasons, these files are kept in the third_party/stdlib subdir.
The parts of the standard library that cannot be written in pure Python, e.g. file and directory operations, are kept in the lib subdir. In CPython these kinds of modules are written as C extensions. In Grumpy they are written in Python but they use native Go extensions to access facilities not otherwise available in Python.
compiler: Python package implementating Python -> Go transcompilation logic.lib: Grumpy-specific Python standard library implementation.runtime: Go source code for the Grumpy runtime library.third_party/stdlib: Pure Python standard libraries copied from CPython.tools: Transcompilation and utility binaries.
Questions? Comments? Drop us a line at grumpy-users@googlegroups.com.