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Run your Python application using PyPy – it’s fast!

Posted on March 26, 2011

Try your Python application with PyPy, the new hot Python JIT compiler

  • Your program will run faster…
  • … faster…
  • and ..faster!

Here are quick instructions for using PyPy on OSX. You should be able to apply these instructions to other UNIX systems as well.

Install PyPy by getting binary tarball.

wget http://pypy.org/download/pypy-1.4.1-osx64.tar.bz2
tar -xjf pypy-1.4.1-osx64.tar.bz

Install Distribute / easy_install command (setuptools fork) in order to install third party libraries.

cd pypy-1.4.1-osx64
wget http://python-distribute.org/distribute_setup.py
bin/pypy distribute_setup.py

Install libraries – easy_install seems to run just fine on PyPy as long as you don’t try to install Python native extensions

bin/easy_install plac # command line parser
bin/easy_install iso8601 # date format parser

Then run your application

~/code/pypy-1.4.1-osx64/bin/pypy exceptionanalysis.py     -s=2010-01-01T00:00:00 /Users/moo/xxx/log/client1.log

In my case the application was a simple log analyzer based on Python generators (code will be posted later). It reads a text file and tries to interpret it. The script utilizes only one CPU core and thus is very CPU bound. The speed comparison results are

  • With Python 2.4: Completed in 111.08 seconds
  • With PyPy: Completed in 30.39 seconds

That’s almost 4x speed-up!

Things did not work with PyPy

  • import multiprocessing – was not hard dependency, needed to comment out in plac_ext

Here is the traceback if anyone can help:

Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "app_main.py", line 53, in run_toplevel
 File "exceptionanalysis.py", line 20, in <module>
 import plac
 File "/Users/moo/code/pypy-1.4.1-osx64/site-packages/plac-0.8.0-py2.5.egg/plac.py", line 35, in <module>
 from plac_ext import Interpreter, import_main, ReadlineInput, stdout, runp, Monitor
 File "/Users/moo/code/pypy-1.4.1-osx64/site-packages/plac-0.8.0-py2.5.egg/plac_ext.py", line 7, in <module>
 import itertools, traceback, multiprocessing, signal, threading
 File "/Users/moo/code/pypy-1.4.1-osx64/site-packages/multiprocessing-2.6.2.1-py2.5-macosx-10.6-i386.egg/multiprocessing/__init__.py", line 87, in <module>
 import _multiprocessing
 File "/Users/moo/code/pypy-1.4.1-osx64/site-packages/multiprocessing-2.6.2.1-py2.5-macosx-10.6-i386.egg/multiprocessing/_multiprocessing.py", line 7, in <module>
 __bootstrap__()
 File "/Users/moo/code/pypy-1.4.1-osx64/site-packages/multiprocessing-2.6.2.1-py2.5-macosx-10.6-i386.egg/multiprocessing/_multiprocessing.py", line 6, in __bootstrap__
 imp.load_dynamic(__name__,__file__)
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'load_dynamic'

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Installing MySQL-python connector on OSX

Posted on March 2, 2011

Preconditions

  • You are using MySQL installation from mysql.com (and not e.g. from Macports)
  • You want to install MySQL-python egg using easy_install or buildout

You’ll get an error

Getting distribution for 'MySQL-python'.
install_dir /Users/moo/project/eggs/tmp8-j13e
sh: mysql_config: command not found
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "<string>", line 1, in ?
 File "/Users/moo/code/collective.buildout.python/python-2.4/lib/python2.4/site-packages/distribute-0.6.14-py2.4.egg/setuptools/command/easy_install.py", line 1855, in main
 with_ei_usage(lambda:
 File "/Users/moo/code/collective.buildout.python/python-2.4/lib/python2.4/site-packages/distribute-0.6.14-py2.4.egg/setuptools/command/easy_install.py", line 1836, in with_ei_usage
 return f()  
...

 31, in <lambda>
 {'__file__':setup_script, '__name__':'__main__'}
 File "setup.py", line 15, in ?
 File "/var/folders/O8/O8pt7q52F7Oi+P3O0pNqq++++TI/-Tmp-/easy_install-g5cvxl/MySQL-python-1.2.3/setup_posix.py", line 43, in get_config
 File "/var/folders/O8/O8pt7q52F7Oi+P3O0pNqq++++TI/-Tmp-/easy_install-g5cvxl/MySQL-python-1.2.3/setup_posix.py", line 24, in mysql_config
EnvironmentError: mysql_config not found
An error occured when trying to install MySQL-python 1.2.3.Look above this message for any errors thatwere output by easy_install.
While:
 Installing instance.
 Getting distribution for 'MySQL-python'.
Error: Couldn't install: MySQL-python 1.2.3

The reason is that MySQL installer puts MySQL under /usr/local and does not expose MySQL utilites directly to path. MySQL-python expects to find utility mysql_config to configure compile time paths when building native bindings using GCC.

Workaround:

sudo -i
cd /usr/bin
ln -s /usr/local/mysql-5.1.46-osx10.5-x86_64/bin/mysql_config .

Then rerun installer.

Though it is a bit harsh solution to modify system folder, it gets the thing done in simple manner.

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Subversion global-ignores and .egg-info in Python/Plone development

Posted on October 3, 2009

Subversion does a good job by ignoring most of build/temporary/unwanted files by default.

However, there is one exception still existing at least in Subversion 1.6: Python egg folders. All folders whose name ends up with .egg-info should not committed or considered in version controlling actions. your.package.name.egg-info folder is generated inside your Python egg source folder when you run setup.py / setuptools.

If you are working with Python source code eggs, add the following line to your ~/.subversion/config

global-ignores = *.o *.lo *.la #*# .*.rej *.rej .*~ *~ .#* .DS_Store *.egg-info *.pyc *.pyo .project .pydevproject

Otherwise development tools like Mr. Developer might get confused.

Setup.py sdist not including all files

Posted on July 24, 2009

Setuptools has many silent failure modes. One of them is failure to include all files in sdist release (well not exactly a failure, you could RTFM, but the default behavior is unexpected). This post will serve as a google-yourself-answer for this problem, until we get new, shinier, Distribute solving all of our problems.

I b0rked the release for plonetheme.twinapex. Version 1.0 package didn’t include media assets and ZCML configuration files. Luckily Python community reacted quickly and I got advised how to fix it.

By default, setuptools include only *.py files. You need to explicitly declare support for other filetypes in MANIFEST.in file.

Example MANIFEST.in (plonetheme, built in PyDev):

recursive-include plonetheme *
recursive-include docs *
global-exclude *pyc
global-exclude .project
global-exclude .pydevproject

About the author Mikko Ohtamaa