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The Pirate project was developed as a way to run Python programs in the Parrot virtual machine. Python is a high-level programming language. See http://www.python.org for more information about it, such as tutorials, reference documentation, and the source code. Parrot is a virtual machine specification and implementation being written to run Perl 6. Supporting other languages on the Parrot VM is also a goal. However, Parrot doesn't provide major possibilities for Python as such, although it could be considered to have stacklessness, a better GC, a new sort of I/O layer and some potential for Interoperability with other languages. In addition the claimed benefits, e.g., better performance, haven't been been provably demonstrated at this point. So with no real languages running on Parrot, it isn't possible to compare the standard implementation of language X to the Parrot version of language X. Enter Pirate. In August 2003, Michal Sabren (or Michal Wallace, depending on whose web site you look at), produced a new compiler, i.e.: Pirate. There are details about who did what and when (available on the web), but suffice it to say, that with the work of a lot of people, Pirate quickly grew to handle a significant subset of the Python language. In late 2004, Sam Ruby brought Pirate up to date by implementing a set of Python PMCs (Parrot built-in types) and incorporating work from Pie-thon, a separate Python-on-Parrot implementation by the Parrot team. As recently as this summer, Pirate is once again being actively developed. With grant funding from The Perl Foundation and Google's Summer of Code program, University of Arizona student Curtis Hall has been working on decoupling the Parrot code emitter from the Python compiler. Curtis is also planning on developing an Icon compiler for Parrot. Check out the ongoing discussions about the generic compiler system at the Pirate Mailing List site. http://cornerhost.com/mailman/listinfo/pirate__________ Get Pirate! (under construction, but current as of july 13, 2005. Note: some of the tests are not passing at the moment, as Parrot has changed) First, you need to download and compile Parrot. Then you need a recent version of Python. Pirate should work with any Python >= v2.2 (there are reports that it breaks on 2.4+ at the moment) To get the Pirate source code: % cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@pirate.versionhost.com:/cvs/pirate login Logging in to :pserver:anonymous@pirate.versionhost.com:2401/cvs/pirate CVS password: [just hit enter] % cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@pirate.versionhost.com:/cvs/pirate co pirate
Want to help? Join the pirate list! Let us know (here at LAMPgroup), if you're involved.