We’re pleased to announce the 1.8 release of PyPy. As habitual this release brings a lot of bugfixes, together with performance and memory improvements over the 1.7 release. The main highlight of the release is the introduction of list strategies which makes homogenous lists more efficient both in terms of performance and memory. This release also upgrades us from Python 2.7.1 compatibility to 2.7.2. Otherwise it’s “business as usual” in the sense that performance improved roughly 10% on average since the previous release.
you can download the PyPy 1.8 release here:
PyPy is a very compliant Python interpreter, almost a drop-in replacement for CPython 2.7. It’s fast (pypy 1.8 and cpython 2.7.1 performance comparison) due to its integrated tracing JIT compiler.
This release supports x86 machines running Linux 32/64, Mac OS X 32/64 or Windows 32. Windows 64 work has been stalled, we would welcome a volunteer to handle that.
List strategies. Now lists that contain only ints or only floats should be as efficient as storing them in a binary-packed array. It also improves the JIT performance in places that use such lists. There are also special strategies for unicode and string lists.
As usual, numerous performance improvements. There are many examples of python constructs that now should be faster; too many to list them.
Bugfixes and compatibility fixes with CPython.
Windows fixes.
NumPy effort progress; for the exact list of things that have been done, consult the numpy status page. A tentative list of things that has been done:
Right now the numpy module is available under both numpy and numpypy names. However, because it’s incomplete, you have to import numpypy first before doing any imports from numpy.
New JIT hooks that allow you to hook into the JIT process from your python program. There is a brief overview of what they offer.
Standard library upgrade from 2.7.1 to 2.7.2.
As usual, there is quite a bit of ongoing work that either didn’t make it to the release or is not ready yet. Highlights include:
Cheers, The PyPy Team