[pypy-dev] Re: Base Object library (was: stdobjspace status)

[Stephan Diehl]

>
> Yes.  I wrote this, but only sent it to Armin because I thought it was
> too long and maybe it was wrong too.  It is Still too long.  Apologies.

It's neither too long nor wrong. Anyway, if anybody would write only 
something if it's supposed to be the absolute thruth, we might run into some 
severe problems :-)
The exciting thing about this whole project is the fact that it's not set yet 
and things can be discussed.

>
> Laura
>
> Is it possible that this misunderstanding is all about naming?  I am
> getting the impression that Stephan and Christian are looking for some
> basic fundamental types, the foundation of the system, to build things
> out of.  And Armin is saying that there aren't any types, just
> behaviours of object spaces.

Yes, that's it.
  
[...]

>
> Maybe we have a language problem too.  We shouldn't have called it the
> StdObjSpace.  Instead we should have called it the
> C_like_familiar_ObjSpace.

After all, StdObjSpace seems fine since it should contain something that 
behaves like standard python objects.

> Thus what we need are experimental specifications, in the form of
> unit tests, to measure whether a given objectspace is 'standard' or
> not -- in other words, does it comply with C Python.  We aren't looking
> for better bits to build our space out of, we are looking for better
> ways to know if our space produces the correct behaviours.

Definatelly. At least the unittests for intobject and floatobject are doing 
exactly this (but then this is easy, because both xxxobjects are just 
wrappers of Pythons originals).
We probably have to resort to string representations of the results and 
compare them with Python originals.

>
> Laura

Stephan