Cannoli is a compiler for a subset of Python 3.6.5 and is designed to evaluate the language features of Python that negatively impact performance. Cannoli is written in Rust and also compiles Python to Rust. The use of Rust as the intermediate representation was chosen for performance purposes and to avoid writing a garbage collector. Cannoli was developed as work for a Master's Thesis at Cal Poly - San Luis Obispo.
Cannoli supports a subset of Python 3.6.5, its current state omits many features that could not be completed during the duration of the thesis. The main omissions are exceptions and inheritance. Standard library support is also incomplete but covers numerous proofs-of-concepts that could be applied to other types and modules (see Cannolib).
Cannoli supports two major optimizations that come as a result of applying restrictions to the language. Restrictions are placed on the Python features that provide the ability to delete or inject scope elements and the ability to mutate the structure of objects and classes at run time. The corresponding feature branches are scope-opts
and class-opts
. The optimizations are built on top of each other, therefore the class-opts
branch is a superset of the scope-opts
branch. In general, the class-opts
branch yields a performance increase of over 50% from the master
branch.
More information on the results and implementation details of Cannoli can be found in the thesis paper.
👉 Leave the Features: Take the Cannoli - Jonathan Catanio
- Install Rust by following the instructions on their official installation guide. Cannoli is both compiled with Rust 1.24.0 and outputs Rust 1.24.0 code. Changing versions with the Rust toolchain can be done with the
rustup
utility. - Build the project by running
cargo build
orcargo build --release
in the project's root directory. This will create atarget
directory withdebug
orrelease
subdirectories containing the executable. - Compile a Python file by executing the command
./target/release/cannoli [src.py]
Compiling with Cannoli outputs a main.rs
file that can be used in a standalone Rust crate. Ideally the Cannoli compiler would utilize rustc
to output a binary but this wasn't done. The steps on how to run this compiled file are as follows:
- Create a new crate with the command
cargo new --bin sandbox
. Wheresandbox
is the name of the crate. - Move the
main.rs
file into the new crate'ssrc
directory. - Update the
Cargo.toml
file to includecannolib
as a dependency, this is Cannoli's standard library. This can be done by linking to a git repository or to a relative crate.
[dependencies]
cannolib = { git = 'https://github.com/joncatanio/cannolib', branch = 'master' }
Would include the master branch of the Cannolib git repo in the crate.
- To add debugging and all optimizations to release mode, also include these lines in the
Cargo.toml
:
[profile.release]
debug = true
codegen-units = 1
- Finally, build the project from the crate's root directory with
cargo build --release
and run the executable with the command./target/release/sandbox
.
Cannolib provides library support for Cannoli, including a number of types and modules that offload work that would have otherwise been done by the Cannoli compiler. Cannolib provides the implementation of the overall type system as well as built-in functions similar to those defined in the Python library.