What would a high level porting strategy be? Get it running on CPython first, run tests..., set up platform specific details in files X,Y,Z, then try and translate? Perhaps the people who did the ARM port could write a short post on the strategy they took? What things can you disable to get a minimal pypy working first?
CPython has a short Porting document of which the style could be mostly copied and improved on with pypy specific details. https://github.com/python-git/python/blob/master/Misc/Portin...
I like the "Bang on it until you get a >>> prompt" :)
I have an Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU W3540 @ 2.93GHz workstation with two 500GB drives and 12GB of memory.
The last time I ran the build process, it took hours while PyPy drew pretty pictures on the screen in ascii:
https://twitter.com/erikjanss/status/112867649666564096
All I did was run the standard build target following the documentation provided.
My understanding is that while it's busy drawing pretty ascii art (which I have no problem with, by the way) it's building PyPy from the RPython source, which according to other users as recently as December of 2012 "takes ages":
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/julia-dev/4TeGQh8wbmI/...
Hence why I asked if this had been improved yet.
I'm not trolling, or spreading FUD. I'm asking if a significantly negative experience I had has been improved.
One person's subjective opinion of the time taken (which could even be objective, if it takes > 1 hour on HIS system), even exaggerated != FUD.
The term FUD is about an INTENTED, SMEAR campaign. Let's leave it to the era of the MS-Wars, where it belongs.
Second, you don't "just" try to build it - there is an extensive test suite that should be made to pass before you even try building the thing. We're not completely crazy, we won't wait "a few hours" before every single change can be tested.
I know it kind of makes it "boring work" instead of "interesting ranting", but this is the reality.