Ironclad 0.7 Released

Following swiftly on heels of the IronPython 2 RC 2 and DLR 0.9 is a new release of Ironclad. Ironclad is an Open Source project by Resolver Systems, and is an implementation of the Python C API in C#. It allows you to use Python C extensions from IronPython, and our goal is to be able to use Numpy within Resolver One spreadsheets.

The latest release is version 0.7 and includes several major advances since the last release.

• Ironclad 0.7 Release Announcement
• Download Windows Binaries for Release 0.7
• Ironclad Discussion Group

Major advances in the release include:

• Huge chunks of numpy can now be imported and used
• Lots of the numpy tests now pass (from core, fft, lib, linalg and random subpackages) - the distribution includes a test runner that runs the tests we have enabled so far
  
• Major performance improvements (several orders of magnitude faster in some areas)
• Ironclad works with IronPython 2 RC 2 and it no longer creates a separate Python engine, nor does it break the importing of .NET libraries!
  

The following interactive session shows numpy being imported in IronPython 2 using Ironclad:

C:\compile\ironclad-v0.7-bin\build>"C:\Program Files\IronPython 2.0\ipy.exe"
IronPython 2.0 (2.0.0.0) on .NET 2.0.50727.1433
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sys
>>> sys.path.append(r'C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages')
>>> import ironclad
>>> import numpy
Detected numpy import
faking out modules: nosetester, parser, mmap, urllib2, ctypes
>>> numpy.__version__
'1.2.1'
>>> a = numpy.array([[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6]])
>>> a.shape
(2, 3)
>>> a[1, 1]
5
>>> a = numpy.arange(60).reshape(3, 4, 5)
>>> a
array([[[ 0, 1, 2, 3, 4],
[ 5, 6, 7, 8, 9],
[10, 11, 12, 13, 14],
[15, 16, 17, 18, 19]],

[[20, 21, 22, 23, 24],
[25, 26, 27, 28, 29],
[30, 31, 32, 33, 34],
[35, 36, 37, 38, 39]],

[[40, 41, 42, 43, 44],
[45, 46, 47, 48, 49],
[50, 51, 52, 53, 54],
[55, 56, 57, 58, 59]]])
>>> a[..., 3]
array([[ 3, 8, 13, 18],
[23, 28, 33, 38],
[43, 48, 53, 58]])
>>>

So much progress has been made in this release that Giles Thomas hints that "we’re now seriously considering having it as an option (with an explicit note that it’s not ready for production use) in the next release of Resolver One".