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Warn about PyPy being unmaintained
- aragilar 7mo agoSomewhat interesting that "volunteer project no longer under active development" got changed to "unmaintained".
- killingtime74 7mo agoWhat euphemism do you prefer then...
- kev009 7mo agoUndermaintained might be more suited since it does have life but doesn't appear commercially healthy nor apparently relevant to other communities.
- dapperdrake 7mo agoUnderphrased like a pro.
- aragilar 7mo agoThere'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.
- Hamuko 7mo agoBeing three major versions behind CPython is definitely not a great sign for the long-term viability of it.
- saghm 7mo agoI'm not sure "major versions" is the most correct term here, but I think your point is spot on
- Hamuko 7mo agoFor Python, 0.1 increases are major versions and 1.0 increases are cataclysmic shifts.
- johndough 7mo agoI 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.
- toyg 7mo agoThat's like saying the last tax that affected you was passed in 2006...
- localuser13 7mo agoIf you want your code to run, you need a python interpreter that supports the newest of your dependencies. You may not use features that came after 3.6 (though you obviously do), but even if just one dependency or sub-depdendency used a python 3.10 specific feature you now need interpreter at least this new.
- maxloh 7mo agoFor 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/ https://github.com/pypy/pypy/commits/main/ [2]: https://github.com/pypy/pypy/tags https://github.com/pypy/pypy/tags
- johndough 7mo agoThat seems reasonably active to me. You can't really expect more from an open source project without paid full-time developers.
- electroglyph 7mo agomuch respect to the PyPy contributors, but it seems like a pretty fair assessment
- swiftcoder 7mo ago9 months since the last major release definitely feels like a short time in which to declare time-of-death on an open source project
- tempay 7mo agoIt’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.
- masklinn 7mo ago> It’s been a lot longer than that. pypy 7.3.20, officially supporting python 3.11, was released in july 2025: https://pypy.org/posts/2025/07/pypy-v7320-release.html https://pypy.org/posts/2025/07/pypy-v7320-release.html We're in March 2026. That's 9 months, which is exactly what GP stated. > There was a reasonable sized effort to provide binaries via conda-forge but the users never came. How is that in any way relevant to the maintenance status of pypy?
- hobofan 7mo agoIt 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.
- masklinn 7mo ago> It is also lagging behind in terms of Python releases. Which it has always been, especially since Python 3, as anyone who's followed the pypy project in the last decade years is well aware.
- didip 7mo agowow, that would be a big shame. I hope many of the useful learnings are already ported to CPython.
- mkl 7mo agoAlmost none of it will have been ported to CPython, as it's a completely different approach.
- skissane 7mo agoI 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.
- hrmtst93837 7mo ago[flagged]
- mattip 7mo ago- The pure python repl started off in PyPy, although a lot of work was done to make it ready for prime time by the COython core devs - The lessons from HPy are slowly making their way into CPython, see https://github.com/py-ni https://github.com/py-ni - There were many fruitful interactions in fixing subtle bugs in CPython that stemmed from testing the stdlib on an alternative implementation And more
- the_jeremy 7mo agoIf 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 https://github.com/orgs/pypy/discussions/5145
- Muhammad523 7mo agoThanks. I knew this already but keep forgetting and getting confused
- with 7mo agoThanks, I also saw this as PyPI and was confused, lol
- blahgeek 7mo agoReminds me of Cython vs CPython
- throwaway27448 7mo ago
- doctorpangloss 7mo agoknowing 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.
- Imustaskforhelp 7mo 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 https://endowment.dev/about/#model [1]: https://benjdd.com/languages2/ https://benjdd.com/languages2/ (Refer to PyPY and Python difference being ~15x)
- skissane 7mo 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
- latexr 7mo ago> unfortunately, @-pinging does not work on this site I’d call it fortunate, and a feature. Not pinging certainly avoids many discussions becoming too heated too fast between two people and lets other opinions intervene.
- pbhjpbhj 7mo agoThere are systems in place to prevent fast back-and-forth arguments. Not having a mentions functionality for those who wish to use it doesn't seem to to change anything around over-heated discussions. I'd make @ a page like 'threads' which just includes any comments with @$username.
- latexr 7mo ago
- mattip 7mo agoPyPy 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 https://pypy.org/contact.html
- stuaxo 7mo agoThe website should have a prominent Donate section, maybe have some tiers of donation like the Ladybird browser does. I wanted to put a little £ towards the project but couldn't see a place to do it.
- IanCal 7mo agoI don’t disagree about prominence but to share the links under the about section for people here https://pypy.org/howtohelp.html https://pypy.org/howtohelp.html https://opencollective.com/pypy https://opencollective.com/pypy
- bob_theslob646 7mo agoThanks for sharing this. I just donated. Been using them for many many years.
- stuaxo 7mo agoThanks, I should add PyPy to the list of projects I send a little to ... PyPy should be better supported by organisations + not need individual contributions, but things are where they are I guess.
- trueismywork 7mo agoAlso big notice that it is unmaintained
- RobotToaster 7mo agoAnd that the corporations using their work should donate if they actually want it maintained.
- _zagj 7mo agoOdd how you still see announcements of this nature if Anthropic's marketing is be believed.
- dapperdrake 7mo ago"You're completely right. That mushroom is poisonous."
- Hamuko 7mo agoMost maintainers don't have a stack of cash to throw at tokens.
- croddin 7mo agoThey 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://claude.com/contact-sales/claude-for-oss https://openai.com/form/codex-for-oss/ https://openai.com/form/codex-for-oss/
- Hamuko 7mo agoI'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.
- pansa2 7mo agoPyPy 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.
- mattip 7mo agoThird 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.
- toxik 7mo agoPyPy on numpy heavy code is often a lot slower than CPython
- mattip 7mo agoYes. 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 https://github.com/py-ni
- glkindlmann 7mo agoSorry can you explain more the connection between PyPy and CFFI (which generates compiled extension modules to wrap an existing C library)? I have never used PyPy, but I use CFFI all the time (to wrap C libraries unrelated to Python so that I can use them from Python)
- scosman 7mo agoRead as PyPi and almost had heart attack
- shevy-java 7mo agoWhat 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.
- puzzledobserver 7mo agoWikipedia 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.
- aragilar 7mo agoI think back then PyPI was known as the cheeseshop, so there wouldn't have been the same confusion.
- scbrg 7mo agoNo. PyPy development was ongoing long before the first release. The first intact commit in the PyPy repo is from February 2003: https://github.com/pypy/pypy/commit/6434e25b53aa307288e5cd8c52ffdc1280315a90 https://github.com/pypy/pypy/commit/6434e25b53aa307288e5cd8c.... And that commit indicates there's been development going on for a while already. The commit message is: "Move the pypy trunk into its own top level directory so the path names stay constant." PyPy migrated from Subversion to git at some point. Not sure how much of the history survived the migration.
- stavros 7mo agoThere is no PyPi, it's PyPI (py pee eye), the Python package index.
- dxdm 7mo agoIf you have to insist that a name needs a certain capitalization to properly exist, you're in the territory of brand zealotry and pedantry. The people who don't care for one reason or other vastly outnumber you, and they will invent your disfavored capitalization into existence. The same goes for pronunciation. GIF? Jira? If your thing can be reached under "pypi.org", you can either accept that people will come up with their own ideas of how to capitalize or pronounce the name, or you can fight against windmills and tell people what ought to exist or not.
- cfbolztereick 7mo agoPyPy 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.
- m000 7mo agoThe text merged to the documentation is more concise than the PR title: > not actively developed anymore
- masklinn 7mo agoWhich is just as wrong.
- hyperpape 7mo agoI think the most significant boundary is given by the question: "is there a plan to support new minor versions of Python?" It sounds like there is not. There may be non-zero maintenance work happening, but a project that only maintains support for old versions and will never adopt new ones is functionally one that the ecosystem will eventually forget about. Maybe you call that "under active development" but my response is "ok, then I don't care whether it's under active development, I (and 99.9% of other people) should care about whether it's going to support new minor versions." On the other hand, if you don't support new minor versions day one, but you eventually support them, that's quite different.
- crote 7mo agoMore specifically, the Scientific Python community through SPEC 0[0] recommends that support for Python versions is dropped three years after their release. Python 3.12 was released in October 2023[1], so that community is going to drop support for it in October 2026. Considering that PyPy is only just now starting to seriously work on supporting 3.12, there's a pretty high chance that it won't even be ready for use before becoming obsolete. At that point it doesn't even matter whether you want to call it "in active development", it is simply too far behind to be relevant. [0]: https://scientific-python.org/specs/spec-0000/ https://scientific-python.org/specs/spec-0000/ [1]: https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3120/ https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3120/
- moktonar 7mo agoThank you for all the work guys, I’ll see how I can help.
- DemocracyFTW2 7mo ago> This thread is about PyPy, not PyPI. The hardest things in programming. That and designing a logo for something you cannot touch, smell or see.
- markkitti 7mo agoIs Python dying? /s
- xvilka 7mo agoAt this point it's probably better investing time and money into RustPython[1][2]. [1] https://rustpython.github.io/ https://rustpython.github.io/ [2] https://github.com/RustPython/RustPython https://github.com/RustPython/RustPython
- silverwind 7mo agoWhy would anyone use a python interpreter that is slower than CPython?
- 1970-01-01 7mo agoMoney is a forcing function for development. Why is there still no way to donate to all devs in the dependency tree? Should we just anticipate expensive problems just like this when the rot finally makes it uncomfortable to continue development?
- semiinfinitely 7mo agomy view/experience is that pypy only makes faster the type of python code which you absolutely should not write in python if you care about performance
- indubioprorubik 7mo agoIs this another subversion attack? Basically putting up some subverted package to a established one, that is lazily maintained and then created enough ruckus for the target to switch packages?
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- xyyzy 7mo agoI remember from the Gentoo days that when you compiled PyPy from source it would generate a Mandelbrot in ANSI art during the compilation. I was so impressed!