"Warn about PyPy being unmaintained"
170 points
7 hours ago
| 12 comments
| github.com
| HN
mattip
3 hours ago
[-]
PyPy core dev here. If anyone is interested in helping out, either financially or with coding, we can be reached various ways. See https://pypy.org/contact.html
reply
cfbolztereick
1 hour ago
[-]
PyPy isn't unmaintained. We are certainly fixing bugs and are occasionally improving the jit. However, the remaining core devs (me among them) don't have the capacity to keep up with cpython. So for supporting new cpython versions we'll need new people to step up. For 3.12 this has started, we have a new contributor who is pushing this along.
reply
the_jeremy
4 hours ago
[-]
If anyone else is also barely aware and confused by the similar names, PyPI is the Python Package Index, which is up and maintained. PyPy is "A fast, compliant alternative implementation of Python." which doesn't have enough devs to release a version for 3.12[0].

[0]: https://github.com/orgs/pypy/discussions/5145

reply
darkwater
1 hour ago
[-]
Thanks for the clarification. On top of that, being an issue in the 'uv' GitHub repo (uv installs packages from PyPi) made my brain easily cross the letters.
reply
blahgeek
3 hours ago
[-]
Reminds me of Cython vs CPython
reply
tpoacher
47 minutes ago
[-]
and mypy is "an optional static type checker for Python" [0]

Given that both pypy (through RPython) and mypy deal with static type checks in some sense, I kept confusing the two projects until recently.

Also, I just learnt (from another comment in this post) about mypyc [1], which seems to complete the circle somehow in my mind.

  [0] https://www.mypy-lang.org/
  [1] https://github.com/mypyc/mypyc
reply
Muhammad523
4 hours ago
[-]
Thanks. I knew this already but keep forgetting and getting confused
reply
cjfd
42 minutes ago
[-]
The short summary of it being that these people are beyond terrible at giving names to things.
reply
kelvinjps10
10 minutes ago
[-]
The python community has the habit of giving short names for things
reply
with
4 hours ago
[-]
Thanks, I also saw this as PyPI and was confused, lol
reply
chii
3 hours ago
[-]
now somebody just needs to make a PiPy for the raspberry pi
reply
f1shy
1 hour ago
[-]
Please don’t give ideas
reply
zugi
3 hours ago
[-]
Is that PiPyPy or PiPyPI?
reply
pansa2
2 hours ago
[-]
PyPy is a fantastic achievement and deserves far more support than it gets. Microsoft’s “Faster CPython” team tried to make Python 5x faster but only achieved ~1.5x in four years - meanwhile PyPy has been running at over 5x faster for decades.

On the other hand, I always got the impression that the main goal of PyPy is to be a research project (on meta-tracing, STM etc) rather than a replacement for CPython in production.

Maybe that, plus the core Python team’s indifference towards non-CPython implementations, is why it doesn’t get the recognition it deserves.

reply
mattip
1 hour ago
[-]
Third party libraries like SciPy scikit-learn, pandas, tensorflow and pytorch have been critical to python’s success. Since CPython is written in C and exposes a nice C API, those libraries can leverage it to quickly move from (slow) python to (fast) C/C++, hitting an optimum between speed of development and speed of runtime.

PyPy’s alternative, CFFI, was not attractive enough for the big players to adopt. And HPy, another alternative that would have played better with Cython and friends came too late in the game, by that time PyPy development had lost momentum.

reply
toxik
1 hour ago
[-]
PyPy on numpy heavy code is often a lot slower than CPython
reply
mattip
3 minutes ago
[-]
Yes. The C API those libraries use is a good fit to CPython, a bad fit to PyPy. Hence CFFI and HPy. Actually, many if the lessons from HPy are making their way into CPython since their JIT and speedups face the same problems as PyPy. See https://github.com/py-ni
reply
aragilar
5 hours ago
[-]
Somewhat interesting that "volunteer project no longer under active development" got changed to "unmaintained".
reply
maxloh
4 hours ago
[-]
For context, they have 2 to 4 commits per month since October [1]. The last release was July 2025 [2].

[1]: https://github.com/pypy/pypy/commits/main/

[2]: https://github.com/pypy/pypy/tags

reply
electroglyph
2 hours ago
[-]
much respect to the PyPy contributors, but it seems like a pretty fair assessment
reply
swiftcoder
1 hour ago
[-]
9 months since the last major release definitely feels like a short time in which to declare time-of-death on an open source project
reply
hobofan
19 minutes ago
[-]
It is also lagging behind in terms of Python releases. They are currently on 3.11, which was released 3.5 years ago for mainline Python.
reply
tempay
1 hour ago
[-]
It’s been a lot longer than that. There was a reasonable sized effort to provide binaries via conda-forge but the users never came. That said, the PyPy devs were always a pleasure to work with.
reply
killingtime74
4 hours ago
[-]
What euphemism do you prefer then...
reply
aragilar
3 hours ago
[-]
There's a difference between dead (i.e. "unmaintained") and low activity ("not under active development"). From what I can see PyPy is in the latter category (and being in that category does not mean it's going to die soon), so choosing to claim it is unmaintained is notable.
reply
Hamuko
2 hours ago
[-]
Being three major versions behind CPython is definitely not a great sign for the long-term viability of it.
reply
saghm
2 hours ago
[-]
I'm not sure "major versions" is the most correct term here, but I think your point is spot on
reply
Hamuko
1 hour ago
[-]
For Python, 0.1 increases are major versions and 1.0 increases are cataclysmic shifts.
reply
johndough
16 minutes ago
[-]
I don't know about that. For me, f-strings were the last great quality-of-life improvement that I wouldn't want to live without, and those landed in Python 3.6. Everything after that has not really made much of a difference to me.
reply
kev009
4 hours ago
[-]
Undermaintained might be more suited since it does have life but doesn't appear commercially healthy nor apparently relevant to other communities.
reply
dapperdrake
2 hours ago
[-]
Underphrased like a pro.
reply
didip
5 hours ago
[-]
wow, that would be a big shame. I hope many of the useful learnings are already ported to CPython.
reply
mkl
4 hours ago
[-]
Almost none of it will have been ported to CPython, as it's a completely different approach.
reply
skissane
3 hours ago
[-]
I really like PyPy’s approach of using a Python dialect (RPython) as the implementation language, instead of C. From a conceptual perspective, it is much more elegant. And there are other C-like Python dialects now too - Cython, mypy’s mypyc. It would be a shame if PyPy dies.
reply
moktonar
1 hour ago
[-]
Thank you for all the work guys, I’ll see how I can help.
reply
scosman
2 hours ago
[-]
Read as PyPi and almost had heart attack
reply
doctorpangloss
4 hours ago
[-]
knowing pypy has good implementations of a lot of behavior it helped me fix multiprocessing in Maya's python interpreter, fixing stuff like torch running inside of Maya.

it's too bad. it is a great project for a million little use cases.

reply
anonnon
3 hours ago
[-]
Odd how you still see announcements of this nature if Anthropic's marketing is be believed.
reply
jorvi
1 hour ago
[-]
Yup.

For me the biggest signifier is Spotify. They claim their (best) devs don't even code anymore, they use an internal AI tool that they just send prompts to which then checks out a personal test build that they can download off of Slack. "A new feature in 10 minutes!"

Okay, if that is the case, why have we only seen like 3-4 minor new QoL improvements in Spotify the last ~12 months, with no new grand features? And why haven't they fired 95% of their devs and let the remaining elite go buckwild with Claude?

The Emperor really has no clothes.

reply
re-thc
3 minutes ago
[-]
> They claim their (best) devs don't even code anymore

No, they claimed they didn’t code during a time period. Around year end until early this year. Technically they could have just been on leave.

Also best dev = principal / staff engineers. They rarely code anyway.

AI or no AI anyone could have made that claim.

reply
QQ00
2 hours ago
[-]
Anthropic released vibe coded C compiler that doesn't work, how their LLM can help in maintaining PyPy?
reply
networked
30 minutes ago
[-]
Strange subthread. I don't see Claude Opus 4.6 changing the tide for PyPy. There is no need to understate AI capabilities to claim it won't.

"Anthropic released vibe coded C compiler that doesn't work" sounds like https://github.com/anthropics/claudes-c-compiler/issues/1 passed through a game of telephone. The compiler has some wrong defaults that prevent it from straightforwardly building a "Hello, world!" like GCC and Clang. The compiler works:

> The 100,000-line compiler can build a bootable Linux 6.9 on x86, ARM, and RISC-V. It can also compile QEMU, FFmpeg, SQlite, postgres, redis, and has a 99% pass rate on most compiler test suites including the GCC torture test suite. It also passes the developer's ultimate litmus test: it can compile and run Doom.

https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/building-c-compiler

reply
riedel
24 minutes ago
[-]
> Anthropic released vibe coded C compiler that doesn't work, how their LLM can help in maintaining PyPy?

This is the perfect question to highlight the major players. In my opinion, a rapidly developing language with a clear reference implementation, readily accessible specifications, and a vast number of easily runnable tests would make an ideal benchmark.

reply
Hamuko
2 hours ago
[-]
Most maintainers don't have a stack of cash to throw at tokens.
reply
croddin
2 hours ago
[-]
They don’t need to throw a stack of cash at them, Anthropic and OpenAI have programs for open source maintainers.

https://claude.com/contact-sales/claude-for-oss https://openai.com/form/codex-for-oss/

reply
justinclift
25 minutes ago
[-]
Isn't the Claude one only for a few months?

(I haven't checked the OpenAI one, as I have no interest in them)

reply
Hamuko
1 hour ago
[-]
I'd say they're less of "programs" as they are "six-month trials". What's the plan after six months?

And for what's it worth, PyPy isn't even eligible for the Claude trial because they have a meager 1700 stars on GitHub.

reply
blitzar
58 minutes ago
[-]
> What's the plan after six months?

An unmaintainable mass of Ai slop code and the decision to either pay the ai tax or abandon the project.

reply
dapperdrake
2 hours ago
[-]
"You're completely right. That mushroom is poisonous."
reply
Imustaskforhelp
3 hours ago
[-]
@kvinogradov (Open source endowment), I am (Pinging?) you because I think that you may be of help as I remember you stating that within the Open source endowment and the approach of how & which open source projects are better funded[0]

And I think that PyPy might be of interest to the Fund for sponsoring given its close to unmaintained. PyPy is really great in general speeding up Python[1] by magnitudes of order.

Maybe the fund could be of help in order to help paying the maintainer who are underfunded which lead to the situation being unmaintained in the first place. Pinging you because I am interested to hear your response and hopefully, see PyPy having better funding model for its underfunded maintainers.

[0]: https://endowment.dev/about/#model

[1]: https://benjdd.com/languages2/ (Refer to PyPY and Python difference being ~15x)

reply
skissane
3 hours ago
[-]
> @kvinogradov (Open source endowment), I am (Pinging?) you

unfortunately, @-pinging does not work on this site, it does nothing to notify anyone. If you want to get a specific person’s attention, use off-site communication mechanisms

reply
pinkmuffinere
3 hours ago
[-]
HN doesn’t have this sort of pinging behavior :/
reply
shevy-java
2 hours ago
[-]
What annoys me is the name. Early morning it took me a moment to realise that PyPy is not PyPi, so at first I thought they referred to PyPi. Really, just for the name confusion alone, one of those two should have to go.

Edit: I understand the underlying issue and the PyPy developer's opinion. I don't disagree on that part; I only refer to the name similarity as a problem.

reply
puzzledobserver
6 minutes ago
[-]
Wikipedia tells me that the package index PyPI (launched in 2003) is about 4 years older than the interpreter PyPy (first released in 2007).

Still, at its core, PyPy is a Python interpreter which is itself written in Python and the name PyPy fittingly describes its technical design.

reply