CPython in the web browser under Native Client

Subject: CPython in the web browser under Native Client
From: Mark Seaborn <mrs@mythic-beasts.com>
To: python-dev@python.org
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2009 17:09:36 +0100 (BST)

I have been doing some work to extend Google's Native Client [1] to
support dynamic linking [2].  For those who haven't heard of it,
Native Client is a sandboxing system for running a subset of x86 code.
It is proposed as a way of running native code inside web apps.

One of my aims has been to get CPython working in the web browser
under Native Client without having to modify CPython.

I recently got to the point where modules from the Python standard
library are importable under Native Client, including (as a
demonstration) the Sqlite extension module.  Sqlite also requires no
modification - it builds straight from the Debian package.

I've written a simple REPL to demonstrate Python running in the
browser.  There are some screenshots on my blog [3].  I haven't
implemented accessing the DOM from Python yet - that's another project
for later. :-)

Mark

[1] http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/
[2] http://plash.beasts.org/wiki/NativeClient
[3] http://lackingrhoticity.blogspot.com/2009/06/python-stand...