RustPython

&gt; &quot;it can be compiled to WebAssembly in order to run Python in the browser.&quot;<p>I have seen this approach with C-python and NodeJS already and I think it simply not viable, what they are suggesting is compiling the runtime (the same one you use in non-wasm projects) to wasm and then run your python code on top of it.<p>This is a double-whammy of performance degradation, you basically have two JIT-compilation steps happening (once by the wasm runtime to compile the rust-python wasm and again by the rust-python code compiling your python code). And this is on top of normal performance degradation from using a dynamically typed language compared to a statically typed language<p>To make dynamic languages (even JS) viable to run in a wasm runtime, the language must be compiled directly to wasm.<p>Project still looks pretty cool and useful though, there is plenty of python code that could be useful to use in the browser no matter how badly it runs. Just don&#x27;t try to build a web framework on top of this kind of approach.<p>Edit: Let me reframe this a bit, this is what I think, I haven&#x27;t really benchmarked anything and rust python might be doing some tricks I am not aware of.

Just putting my hand up to say that MicroPython is awesome (and runs on the RP2040). <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;micropython.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;micropython.org</a>

I think it&#x27;s really cool that Python has a healthy third-party interpreter community. PyPy, IronPython, Jython, and now RustPython expand Python&#x27;s accessibility. It&#x27;s very cool to see how many people are working on this, and I wonder what kind of problems with CPython this has exposed also.

I thought RustPython is what Ironpython become after being abandoned for a while.

Related:<p><i>RustPython – A Python-3 (CPython &gt;= 3.11.0) Interpreter written in Rust</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=35056586">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=35056586</a> - March 2023 (136 comments)<p><i>A full Python interpreter written in Rust</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=31086317">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=31086317</a> - April 2022 (7 comments)<p><i>Python interpreter written in rust reaches 10000 commits</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=29094323">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=29094323</a> - Nov 2021 (93 comments)<p><i>RustPython: A Python interpreter written in Rust</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28280790">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28280790</a> - Aug 2021 (49 comments)<p><i>RustPython – Python Written in Rust</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27060802">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27060802</a> - May 2021 (2 comments)<p><i>A Python interpreter rewritten in Rust, that can run pip</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26030269">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26030269</a> - Feb 2021 (48 comments)<p><i>A Python Interpreter Written in Rust</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19064069">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19064069</a> - Feb 2019 (194 comments)

Happy to see RustPython making awesome progress!<p>Note: I just realized that they mention wapm in their homepage. We phased out the WAPM CLI in favor of Wasmer (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wasmer.io">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wasmer.io</a>), so you can simply run in your shell:<p><pre><code> wasmer run rustpython </code></pre> Or, if you want to try it using the Wasmer JS SDK:<p><pre><code> import { Wasmer } from &quot;@wasmer&#x2F;sdk&quot;; let rustpython = Wasmer.fromRegistry(&quot;rustpython&quot;); let instance = await rustpython.entrypoint.run({ args: &quot;-c \&quot;print(1)\&quot;&quot; }); let output = await instance.wait(); </code></pre> Will send a PR soon it can be updated!

I&#x27;m not convinced that projects like this can really have broad application. The value of Python is interfacing to native libraries, but as soon as you use something like PyPy, you lose access to all of that. It&#x27;s the same story with the performance orientated forks of cPython.

&gt; Each of these implementations offer some benefits: Jython, for example, compiles Python 2 source code to Java byte code... IronPython is well-integrated with .NET, which means IronPython can use the .NET framework and Python 2 libraries or vice versa.<p>Python 2 is dead and that&#x27;s why Jython and IronPython, who have failed to catch up with Python 3, are dead as well and are not worth mentioning, are they?

Does it allow sandboxing, or is Lua still the only good option for that?<p>There are so many cases where you&#x27;d rather not give extension scripts unlimited access to the OS and file system, you&#x27;d think this option would be more common...

How do extensions work with interpreters written other languages? Does the interpreter still expose a C API?

We&#x27;ve been using RustPython as the Python interpreter for our project Kybra, which is a Python environment for the Internet Computer Protocol (decentralized cloud, where all programs are automatically replicated across 13-40 nodes). Wasm is the runtime environment on ICP.<p>It&#x27;s been working quite well, though lack of C extensions is a problem. We&#x27;re hoping to move to CPython once the wasi and C extension support is there.<p>But the project works, compiles to wasm32-wasi, and can execute on the live ICP network: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;demergent-labs&#x2F;kybra">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;demergent-labs&#x2F;kybra</a>

I was curious about how slow (or fast) it is compared to cpython. On fibonacci.py rustpython about 11x slower than cpython.<p><pre><code> def fib(n): if n == 0 or n == 1: return 1 return fib(n-1) + fib(n-2) print(fib(35)) time python3 ~&#x2F;code&#x2F;fibs.py 14930352 ________________________________________________________ Executed in 1.18 secs fish external usr time 1.14 secs 180.00 micros 1.14 secs sys time 0.01 secs 616.00 micros 0.01 secs time .&#x2F;target&#x2F;release&#x2F;rustpython ~&#x2F;code&#x2F;fibs.py 14930352 ________________________________________________________ Executed in 13.44 secs fish external usr time 13.32 secs 175.00 micros 13.32 secs sys time 0.02 secs 776.00 micros 0.02 secs</code></pre>

I&#x27;m curious how large the WASM target is.<p>One of the things that turned me off of C#&#x27;s Blazor WASM was the payload size. I&#x27;ve found some of Rust&#x27;s offerings like yew and leptos more interesting.

Last blog entry being from &quot;Dec 1, 2021&quot; doesn&#x27;t make it sound like there&#x27;s much action.

I’ve been going the other way, adding rust bindings for some performance-critical code, and calling it from Python. It’s worked wonders, speeding things up 20-30x in some places. This also has the benefit of compiling to WASM if I need to, so it’s a breeze to run my code in the browser.

I&#x27;ve been using RustPython for my side project (scripting purpose) and its been amazing ride so far! (albeit with minimal docs which is understandable at this stage). AFAIK, the parser also been used in the awesome ruff project

For a dum dum like me who only dabbles in programming:<p>What would be a use case for this?

&gt; RustPython is in a development phase and should not be used in production or a fault intolerant setting. Our current build supports only about half of the Python standard library.

RustyPython is more memorable and has a catchy flair; my $0.02

Wonder how difficult it would be to write something akin to PyO3 but with python syntax for writing rust programs, just like a subset

How does their garbage collection work? Especially in Rust it would be cool to see a concurrent collector.

&gt;<i>RustPython can be embedded into Rust programs to use Python as a scripting language for your application</i><p>How big are my binaries going to be if I embed a whole Python interpreter in it?

Cool. Can I use NumPy, SciPy, PyTorch, Shapely, ...?

How is it about safety then? All the Rust program parts scripted using python are unsafe?

Pretty cool, especially the potential for using python as a scripting language embedded in rust programs. That said, python makes me wince.

That&#x27;s cool, but now for REAL bare-metal performance someone should rewrite Python in an even lower-level language. That&#x27;s right, Python written in C is gonna be hella fast! Oh, wait…

please, just stop with Python already

python is already written in plain and simple C, it is sad to make it depends on such complex language which is rust (no less worse than c++).<p>Actually, I would not mind a python interpreter in rv64 assembly (near 0 SDK) instead.