The Python libraries expect an APE environment, and that assumption is
deeply built in to it.
The previous attempt to do a so-called "native" port ended up writing large
chunks of APE in Python,
which was a bit of a waste of time, or it couldn't run all the existing
things, such as Mercurial.
Using APE means that you don't need to re-write it in Python, and
incorporating a new Python
release can be made relatively straightforward (except for bugs in Python).

On 14 March 2012 06:15, Steven Stallion <sstallion@gmail.com> wrote:

> Ideally we could have a more complete port that wouldn't require APE,
> but that may be approaching the point of diminishing returns.
>