From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-Id: <200101050339.TAA00366@tammananny.tiger> To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 02 Jan 2001 17:39:16 GMT." From: Quinn Dunkan Subject: [9fans] python and lua Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 19:39:24 -0800 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 44996a2c-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 > I'd like to know who else is interested in this and if anyone is > interested if we could get a Plan 9 Python project together. I would > like to see Plan 9 support, native (though with sockets to support > various existing internet client classes) and with classes to support > Plan 9's unique features, in some future release of Python. > > I've made a start at getting it going, and I can put in some more > work, but I can't do most of it; once the next term starts, I'll have > to concentrate on my (non-CS) schoolwork. So are there enough of us > with interest and time to keep at it? I'm interested in this too. I also made a port, but ran into trouble when trying to write extension modules. The problem was that I needed to compile python under the APE, but extension modules had to be compiled natively to use the native plan9 functions. I got tired of monkeying around with APE impedance-matching, and decided to port lua to compile natively, since lua has fewer posix dependencies and is smaller in general. Besides, I realized that all my plan9 hack time was going into learning the vagaries of the plan9 emulation of the same old posix, which is sort of missing the point :) So I wrote out a mkfile and hacked around all the lua posixlyness, and now I'm starting on a p9lib wrapper which will provide the basic syscalls. I might write an io library that uses BIO instead of stdio, and purge stdio from the interpreter, which ought to make it a bit smaller, but mostly give me an excuse to get familiar with BIO. Then I'll see about writing a lua library to speak 9p, so I can easily set up "language driven fileservers" like the plumber, even on non-plan9 systems (provided 9p will work over tcp...). Maybe experiment with bouncing lua bytecode around with the plumber, if I can think of any sort of use for that. Anyway, seeing as python is still one of my favorite languages, I'd love to see it under plan9 as well. And plan9 definitely needs a few more high-level languages (I mean, awk is great and all, but... you know...). And some miscellanea---miscellaneou---ARGH! Some random questions: Are the plan9 fonts anti-aliased? It sorta looks like they are, but that may be the result of bad eyes, a dusty monitor, and a fuzzy voodoo3 card. I get lots of random slow-downs, where entering text or something will hang for just a moment. I can get quite long hangs if someone sucks up cpu time, like if I ask 'page' to reverse its image. Especially scrolling text in acme is slow---if I click on the scrollbar at a steady rate, it will scroll in irregular bursts. Is the voodoo3 driver accelerated? I do have a 'echo accel on >#v/vgactl' in my termrc, but it doesn't seem to make a lot of difference. Is this usual? I'm running a local kfs, would these go away with a real fileserver?