[pypy-dev] cleanup sprint planning

[Carl Friedrich Bolz]

Hi PyPy-Dev,

there has been the vague plan for a cleanup sprint since the end of the
EU project. It is becoming more concrete now: There is the vague idea of
doing a sprint in October/November (probably November) at Laura's place
in Gothenburg. To coordinate the possible times a bit, I have set up a
doodle:

http://doodle.ch/5awzskkt5mian94a

Please enter your available times if you want to attend. Note that this
sprint is going to be likely newbie-unfriendly because of its
refactoring and cleanup focus.

About the work for the sprint: this is a list of possible tasks (they
may be too much and some may happen before the sprint), other
suggestions are also possible as long as they involve "cleanups".

Meta-Task
---------

  - Tracker-gardening
  - Start slowly thinking about 1.1 plans

Translation toolchain
---------------------

  - finish rctypes removal
  - implement correct implicit GIL release

  - move away from implicit keepalives
  - raw_malloc should be split, rffi one should not use obmalloc (it's
    not thread-safe)
  - kill simulator, run the semi space tests on llinterp (may happen
    before)
  - have a moving gc correct version of the gc framework transformation
  - delegate finding type stuff like vtables etc to GC, cleaner interface
    for rtti, simplify translator/c/gc.py
  - think about approaches to id, especially concerning boehm, where the
    id will keep the object alive and concerning a moving GC

  - clean up the tangle of including headers in the C backend

  - review pdbplus, especially the graph commands, also in the light of
    https://codespeak.net/issue/pypy-dev/issue303 and the fact that we
    can have more than one translator/annotator around (with the
    timeshifter)
  - remember and fix the inlining exception bug

Interpreter
-----------

  - there's a shadow tracking bug it seems

  - fix taint space

  - review the things implemented at applevel whether they are
    performance-critical

JIT
-------

  - start writing real unit tests for the merging logic


Please post all comments you might have about the planning or the tasks
above.

Looking forward to a productive sprint.

Carl Friedrich & Samuele