Using NumPy and Cpython with Jython

Question

I must use a commercial Java library, and would like to do it from Python. Jython is robust and I am fine with it being a few dot releases behind. However, I wo

Answer 1

I look very much formard to the Jython C Extension API! That would be awesome!

Until, that point, I think you have two alternatives:

• http://jepp.sourceforge.net/ for embedding python in java, it has a nice console. The disadvatage, for me a too big disadvatage, is that it needs to be compiled against your own python. And with the python upgrade, you have to recompile (I don't want to compile python, in order to compile and use the extension - it is also not possible, especially if the code should be executed on different machines, on grid for example)

• http://lucene.apache.org/pylucene/jcc/ - this is used for lucene, and for many other projects. I personally use it to wrap GATE NLP engine and also solr. To make that available to Python. Jcc is much faster than the (dead) JPype, probably because some data structures (like lists) are optimized and also because it is interfacing python<->java via C++ extension (according to this: http://www.slideshare.net/onyame/mixing-python-and-java page 30) I have tried moving 6mil of integers in the list between python and java, JPype was orders of magnitude slower (but i don't remember the numbers)

However, using Jcc, you can wrap only public methods, and sometimes it is tricky, especially if that method is receiving or returning certain java objects (in short, JCC must compile wrappers also for the passed-in objects, otherwise all the methods using/returning such methods are not accessible). So unless you need to distribute your code, you are better of with JEPP.