HPy: The Future of Python Native Extensions
07-19, 12:10–12:40 (Europe/Prague), PyCharm (Forum Hall)

Updating Python versions often forces us to update native extensions at the
same time. But what if you need to update Python because of a security issue,
but cannot (yet) move to a newer version of a dependency? Or you are running a
proprietary binary extension that cannot easily be recompiled?

The HPy project provides a better C extension API for Python. It compiles to
binaries that work across all versions of CPython, PyPy, GraalPy. HPy makes
porting from the existing C API easy and its design ensures that the binaries
we produce today stay binary compatible with future Python versions.

NumPy is the single largest direct user of the CPython C API we know of. After
over 2 years of work and more than 30k lines of code ported, we can demonstrate
NumPy running its tests and benchmarks with HPy. We will show the same NumPy
binary run on multiple CPython versions and GraalPy. And we will discuss
performance characteristics of this port across CPython, GraalPy, and PyPy.


Expected audience expertise

advanced

See also: Slides (3.3 MB)

GraalPy and HPy core developer. Programming languages, virtual machines, and runtimes enthusiast. Surfer in a landlocked country.

Florian Angerer is member of the Graal project at Oracle Labs and works on GraalPy, a fast, Java-based implementation of Python. He is also core developer of HPy, a new API for extending Python in C. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.