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Metadata-Version: 2.1
Name: hpy
Version: 0.9.1.dev61+g79fb330d
Summary: A better C API for Python
Home-page: https://hpyproject.org
Author: The HPy team
Author-email: hpy-dev@python.org
License: MIT
Requires-Python: >=3.8
Description-Content-Type: text/markdown
License-File: LICENSE
License-File: AUTHORS
Requires-Dist: setuptools >=64.0
Provides-Extra: dev
Requires-Dist: pytest ; extra == 'dev'
Requires-Dist: pytest-xdist ; extra == 'dev'
Requires-Dist: filelock ; extra == 'dev'
# HPy: a better API for Python
[](https://github.com/hpyproject/hpy/actions/workflows/ci.yml)
[](https://hpy.readthedocs.io/)
[](https://discord.gg/xSzxUbPkTQ)
**Website**: [hpyproject.org](https://hpyproject.org/) \
**Community**: [HPy Discord server](https://discord.gg/xSzxUbPkTQ) \
**Mailing list**: [hpy-dev@python.org](https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/hpy-dev.python.org/)
## Summary
HPy is a better API for extending Python
in C. The old C API is specific to the current implementation of CPython.
It exposes a lot of internal details which makes it hard to:
- implement it for other Python implementations (e.g. PyPy, GraalPy,
Jython, IronPython, etc.).
- experiment with new things inside CPython itself: e.g. using a GC
instead of refcounting, or to remove the GIL
- guarantee binary stability
HPy is a specification of a new API and ABI for extending Python that is
Python implementation agnostic and designed to hide and abstract internal
details such that it:
- can stay binary compatible even if the underlying Python internals change significantly
- does not hinder internal progress of CPython and other Pythons
Please read the [documentation](https://docs.hpyproject.org/en/latest/overview.html)
for more details on HPy motivation, goals, and features, for example:
- debug mode for better developer experience
- support for incremental porting from CPython API to HPy
- CPython ABI for raw performance on CPython
- and others
Do you want to see how HPy API looks in code? Check out
our [quickstart example](https://docs.hpyproject.org/en/latest/quickstart.html).
You may also be interested in HPy's
[API reference](https://docs.hpyproject.org/en/latest/api-reference/index.html).
This repository contains the API and ABI specification and implementation
for the CPython interpreter. Other interpreters that support HPy natively: GraalPy
and PyPy, provide their own builtin HPy implementations.
## Why should I care about this stuff?
- the existing C API is becoming a problem for CPython and for the
evolution of the language itself: this project makes it possible to make
experiments which might be "officially" adopted in the future
- for PyPy, it will give obvious speed benefits: for example, data
scientists will be able to get the benefit of fast C libraries *and* fast
Python code at the same time, something which is hard to achieve now
- the current implementation is too tied to CPython and proved to be a
problem for almost all the other alternative implementations. Having an
API which is designed to work well on two different implementations will
make the job much easier for future ones: going from 2 to N is much easier
than going from 1 to 2
- arguably, it will be easier to learn and understand than the massive
CPython C API
See also [Python Performance: Past, Present,
Future](https://github.com/vstinner/talks/raw/main/2019-EuroPython/python_performance.pdf)
by Victor Stinner.
## What does `HPy` mean?
The "H" in `HPy` stands for "handle": one of the key idea of the new API is to
use fully opaque handles to represent and pass around Python objects.
## Donate to HPy
Become a financial contributor and help us sustain the HPy community: [Contribute to HPy](https://opencollective.com/hpy/contribute).
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