hpy 0.0.2: First public release

HPy 0.0.2 is out! This is the first version which is officially released and made available on PyPI.

The major highlight of this release is that it is supported by three different Python implementations: CPython, PyPy and GraalPython.

What is HPy?¶

HPy provides a new API for extending Python in C. In other words, you use #include <hpy.h> instead of #include <Python.h>. For more info, look at the official documentation.

Installation¶

HPy 0.0.2 only supports Linux systems, and it's only tested on x86_64. Windows support is already present on master, and it will be included in the next release.

For CPython, you need to install it manually, using pip:

$ pip install hpy==0.0.2

PyPy and GraalPython ships their own version of HPy, so no installation is necessary. HPy 0.0.2 will be included in the next release of both, i.e. PyPy 7.3.6 (expected in October 2021) and GraalPython 21.2.0 (expected on 2021-07-20). In the meantime, you can download a nightly build:

• PyPy 3.7 nightly builds, for example revision 3bf99c09018b

• GraalPython: download the latest graalpython-dev package from this page

To double check the version of HPy which is shipped with those, you can either use pip or hpy.universal.get_version():

$ pypy -m pip show hpy
Name: hpy
Version: 0.0.2
Summary: A better C API for Python
Home-page: https://hpyproject.org
Author: The HPy team
Author-email: hpy-dev@python.org
License: MIT
...

$ pypy -c 'import hpy.universal; print(hpy.universal.get_version()[0])'
0.0.2

API¶

At the moment HPy supports only a small fraction of the full API offered by the old Python/C API, but it is enough to write non-trivial extensions, and the documentation is scarce. public_api.h, which is used to autogenerate parts of the HPy code, is a reliable list of all the supported functions.

Examples¶

The best way to get a glimpse of how to use HPy is to look at examples:

• the HPy repository contains a "proof of concept" package. Make sure to checkout the branch release/0.0.2.

• ultrajson-hpy is a port of the popular ultrajson package. Make sure to checkout the hpy-0.0.2 branch.

• piconumpy contains a very tiny implementation of an array-like class. Make sure to checkout the hpy-0.0.2 branch.