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up vote 19 down vote favorite

When Microsoft handed IronPython over to the open source community I was actually quite pleased, I thought we'd see faster progress, more incremental releases, regular checkins, etc. Ideally, a fork/pull style setup line github projects.

However, the latest checkin is nearly three month old and the last release was an alpha. I would have expected at least daily/weekly commits. Unless the new team have taken a faux open source / open contribution style -- ala ASP.NET MVC, with a separate repository behind closed doors -- then I can only conclude that the project is dying.

As someone learning bits of Python in small bits (mainly daily exercises) should I jump from it now and go directly to CPython? Before I pick up bad traits from a semi-standard implementation?

Yes, I've seen the blogs from mid/late last year IronPython is not dead. But reality tells a different story when you look at key metrics such as checkins and releases.

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3  
should I jump from it now and go directly to CPython before I pick up bad traits from a semi-standard implementation Learning the core Python language properly will allow you to easily transpose this knowledge between IronPython, Jython, PyObjc... they may expose different frameworks but at heart it's still just Python. – ChristopheD Jan 18 '11 at 18:32
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Worrying about which different implementations to learn is not worth it. Just learn the language. Anything above that you can easily pick on later. – A A Jan 18 '11 at 18:34
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You propably should be using the main implementation (CPython) anyway. The alternative implementations always lag behind a bit, even if they're actively developed, and are nowhere as widely adopted. They're sure great for someone who knows Python and wants/needs to use the enviroment they live in (in the case of IronPython: .NET), but for learning, I would advise using the de facto standard implementation. Yes, differences should be small, but it does have its advantages. – delnan Jan 18 '11 at 18:36
October 10 is not that long ago: stackoverflow.com/questions/3881418/… – ChristopheD Jan 18 '11 at 18:42
Are you looking at the right repository? – TryPyPy Jan 18 '11 at 19:11

migrated from stackoverflow.com Jan 19 '11 at 14:03

4 Answers

up vote 20 down vote

No, it's just pining for the fjords. <rimshot />

First off, make sure you're looking in the right spot: the actual source development is now at https://github.com/ironlanguages/main, and I know there are more recent commits because I just pushed some this past weekend. Issues and some docs are still on the CodePlex site, for the time being. So progress is being made, albeit slowly.

The biggest thing that has slowed us down is lack of person-hours to work on it. The Iron* languages went from multiple full time staff (6, I think) to zero. The best way to make the project move faster is to help out, of course, but we haven't done a spectacular job of recruiting new people. It's an enormous project, so it's not surprising people don't know where to begin. We do have a few contributors and have handled a few pull requests, though.

I'm hoping to free up some time in the next few months to get some more publicity around the project and push for a 2.7 final release, and then get started on 3.2/3.3. Hopefully that will help build some momentum. In the meantime, there's some discussion on the mailing list to show that we're not completely MIA.

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1  
Thanks for clarifying Jeff. The website needs a definite big pointer to github, as for recruiting, the quicker you drop the codeplex mess you might be in a position to attract more developers, as it is now most people will follow the tab links on CodePlex (=friction) and see the old repository. – mattcodes Jan 19 '11 at 0:53
up vote 6 down vote

Happily, it seems it's not completely dead. The community has taken it to Github, where there are recent commits (up to yesterday). The repository includes IronRuby as well, but there seems to be activity on both parts.

https://github.com/IronLanguages/main

There's also a Mercurial mirror: https://bitbucket.org/ironpython/ironlanguages/src

The other side of the coin is that they don't seem to have got 2.7 out of the door yet (and it had actually reached a beta by last October), and that their stance on updating either of IronPython's websites (this one and this one) appears to be "what websites?" Both websites still point you to the out of date SVN repository for the source code.

So it's not dead. At best, it's maintained by people who're not interested in publicising it. At worst, it's going rather slower than it was with Microsoft driving.

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Err, yeah, the websites ... those got stuck in a SEP field, unfortunately. – Jeff Hardy Jan 18 '11 at 19:27
@Jeff: Just a bit ;-). I think it's a common problem for open source communities - we're all geeks, we all want to make the code work, and websites go on the 'to do' list for later. – Thomas K Jan 18 '11 at 19:30
Annoyingly, the ironpython.net site (which seems to come out first in web searches) offers a 2.6.1 download and the codeplex one offers a 2.6.2 download. – John Machin Jan 18 '11 at 22:45
up vote 2 down vote

Maybe you're not looking at the right repository? This one looks very much alive.

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up vote 0 down vote

There is at least one battery not yet included:

IronPython 2.6.1 (2.6.10920.0) on .NET 4.0.30319.1
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import zlib
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named zlib

which is the reason for this weird message when you use zipfile:

  File "C:\ironpython26dotnet40\Lib\zipfile.py", line 466, in __init__
    self.dc = zlib.decompressobj(-15)
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'decompressobj'
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i don't have IronPython handy, but i am curious if 'import this' works? :P – Corey Goldberg Jan 18 '11 at 21:53
Just tried it with IPy 2.7 Beta, it does. :) – Aphex Jan 18 '11 at 22:07
zlib will be in the next release of 2.7. – Jeff Hardy Jan 18 '11 at 22:57

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