« Changelog History


Nuitka v0.3.13 Release Notes

  • 🚀 This release is mostly the result of working towards compilation of a real 🔀 programs (Mercurial) and to merge and finalize the frame stack work. Now Nuitka 👍 has a correct frame stack at all times, and supports func_code and gi_code objects, something previously thought to be impossible.

    Actually now it's only the "bytecode" objects that won't be there. And not 👍 attributes of func_code are meaningful yet, but in theory can be supported.

    Due to the use of the "git flow" for Nuitka, most of the bugs listed here were 🚀 already fixed in on the stable release before this release. This time there 🚀 were 5 such hot fix releases, sometimes fixing multiple bugs.

    🐛 Bug fixes

    • 👻 In case of syntax errors in the main program, an exception stack was giving that included Nuitka code. Changed to make the same output as CPython does. Fixed in 0.3.12a already.

    • The star import (from x import *) didn't work for submodules. Providing * as the import list to the respective code allowed to drop the complex lookups we were doing before, and to simply trust CPython C/API to do it correctly. Fixed in 0.3.12 already.

    • The absolute import is not the default of CPython 2.7 it seems. A local posix package shadows the standard library one. Fixed in 0.3.12 already.

    • In --deep mode, a module may contain a syntax error. This is e.g. true of "PyQt" with port_v3 included. These files contain Python3 syntax and fail to be imported in Python2, but that is not to be considered an error. These modules are now skipped with a warning. Fixed in 0.3.12b already.

    • The code to import modules wasn't using the __import__ built-in, which prevented __import__ overriding code to work. Changed import to use the built-in. Fixed in 0.3.12c already.

    • The code generated for the __import__ built-in with constant values was doing relative imports only. It needs to attempt relative and absolute imports. Fixed in 0.3.12c already.

    • The code of packages in "init.py" believed it was outside of the package, giving problems for package local imports. Fixed in 0.3.12d already.

    • It appears that "Scons", which Nuitka uses internally and transparent to you, to execute the compilation and linking tasks, was sometimes not building the binaries or shared libraries, due to a false caching. As a workaround, these are now erased before doing the build. Fixed in 0.3.12d already.

    • The use of in and not in in comparison chains (e.g. a < b < c is one), wasn't supported yet. The use of these in comparison chains a in b in c is very strange.

    Only in the test_grammar.py it was ever used I believe. Anyway, it's supported now, solving this TODO and reducing the difference. Fixed in 0.3.12e already.

    • The order of evaluation for in and not in operators wasn't enforced in a portable way. Now it is correct on "ARM" too. Fixed in 0.3.12e already.

    🆕 New Optimization

    • ⚡️ The built-ins GeneratorExit and StopIteration are optimized to their Python C/API names where possible as well.

    Cleanups

    • The __file__ attribute of modules was the relative filename, but for absolute filenames these become a horrible mess at least on Linux.

    • ➕ Added assertion helpers for sane frame and code objects and use them.

    • 👉 Make use of assertObject in more places.

    • Instead of using os.path.sep all over, added a helper Utils.joinpath that hides this and using os.path.join. This gives more readable code.

    • ➕ Added traces to the "unfreezer" guarded by a define. Helpful in analyzing import problems.

    • 👕 Some PyLint cleanups removing dead code, unused variables, useless pass statement, etc.

    🆕 New Tests

    • 🆕 New tests to cover SyntaxError and IndentationError from --deep imports and in main program.

    • 🆕 New test to cover evaluation order of in and not in comparisons.

    • New test to cover package local imports made by the "init.py" of the package.

    Organizational

    • Drop "compile_itself.sh" in favor of the new "compile_itself.py", because the later is more portable.

    • 🌲 The logging output is now nicer, and for failed recursions, outputs the line that is having the problem.

    Summary

    The frame stack work and the func_code are big for compatibility.

    The func_code was also needed for "hg" to work. For Mercurial to pass all ✅ of its test suite, more work will be needed, esp. the inspect module needs to be run-time patched to accept compiled functions and generators too.

    Once real world programs like Mercurial work, we can use these as more meaningful benchmarks and resume work on optimization.