Nuitka VS cinder

This is a good place to mention https://nuitka.net/ which aims to compile python programs into standalone binaries.

For Python, you could make a proper deployment binary using Nuitka (in standalone mode – avoid onefile mode for this). I'm not pretending it's as easy as building a Go executable: you may have to do some manual hacking for more unusual unusual packages, and I don't think you can cross compile. I think a key element you're getting at is that Go executables have very few dependencies on OS packages, but with Python (once you've sorted the actual Python dependencies) you only need the packages used for manylinux [2], which is not too onerous.

[1] https://nuitka.net/

[2] https://peps.python.org/pep-0599/#the-manylinux2014-policy

glee is rich in blogging features but has some drawbacks. One of the main drawbacks is its compatibility with multiple operating systems and system architectures. We lost one potential customer due to glee incompatibility in macOS. Another major issue is the deployment time. We built the first version of glee entirely in Python and used nuitka, nuitka compiles Python programs into a single executable binary file. We need to create three separate stages for creating executable binaries for Windows, Mac, and Linux in deployment, and it takes around 20 minutes to complete.

There is already an AOT compiler for Python: Nuitka[0]. But I don't think it's much faster.

And then there is mypyc[1] which uses mypy's static type annotations but is only slightly faster.

And various other compilers like Numba and Cython that work with specialized dialects of Python to achieve better results, but then it's not quite Python anymore.

[0] https://nuitka.net/

[1] https://github.com/python/mypy/tree/master/mypyc

Nuitka deals pretty well with those in general: https://nuitka.net/

Hi HN,

Has anyone explored Nuitka [1] and developed understanding from a blank slate?

Is there any toy version of this, so that one can start playing with the language translation concepts?

Is there any underlying theory/inspiration upon which this project is built?

Are there any similar projects, in say other languages?

[1] https://github.com/Nuitka/Nuitka

That's more of cultural problem in the Python community.

If I provide an end user software to my client written an Python (so not a backend, not a lib...), I will compile it with nuitka (https://github.com/Nuitka/Nuitka) and hide the stack trace (https://www.bitecode.dev/p/why-and-how-to-hide-the-python-st...) to provide a stand alone executable.

This means the users don't have to know it's made with Python or install anything, and it just works.

However, Python is not like Go or Rust, and providing such an installer requires more than work, so a huge part of the user base (which have a lot of non professional coders) don't have the skill, time or resources to do it.

And few people make the promotion of it.

I should write an article on that because really, nobody wants to setup python just to use a tool.

As for a simpler option, you could use a "compiler": https://github.com/Nuitka/Nuitka

> Your comment would make sense if Python code could be compiled into x86 or ARM assembly in the first place.

It can actually be compiled (or transpiled) into C code [1] with few limitations, so I can't see why not.

[1] https://github.com/Nuitka/Nuitka

Meta is actually contributing directly to upstream cpython. If you really wanted to, the internal fork is also open source: https://github.com/facebookincubator/cinder

Just one example: last year Meta open-sourced Cinder, which powers Instagram and provides sizeable speedups compared to CPython.

I used to work on the Cinder JIT and can help document any passes you find interesting or confusing.

You might enjoy Cinder then. It's based on CPython so it is nearly 100% compatible.

https://github.com/facebookincubator/cinder/

Disclaimer: I used to work on it.

I think Cinder's Static Python, which also performs runtime type checking, is more ambitious. Though it's not production ready yet.

Here's a fork that implements that https://github.com/facebookincubator/cinder - it might be nice to one day get that up streamed but obviously it'll be controversial and it certainly needs more time to bake. Hopefully at some point we can make it a pip installable extension though.

The other thing that was interesting to me, was the potential of type annotations to help make for a faster, safer experience on the compiler end of things. One example is seen in Meta’s Cinder project, on the docs it explains how typing can be used to reduce the number of steps for the compiler ([cinder/static_python.rst at cinder/3.8 · facebookincubator/cinder · GitHub](https://github.com/facebookincubator/cinder/blob/cinder/3.8/CinderDoc/static_python.rst)), making it more effective.