Pumping up Python modules using Rust - PyCon 2018

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Pumping Python modules using Rust PyCon US 2018 Vigneshwer Dhinakaran | Mozilla TechSpeaker | @dvigneshwer

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Need for native extension Performance Freedom in memory management Access to low-level APIs

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Solutions to native extension Python community & it’s strong lib ecosystem to the rescue

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Native extension aren’t new to Python devs

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Native extension aren’t new to Python devs

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Native extension aren’t new to Python devs

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Native extension aren’t new to Python devs

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Reality: Not many of us can write C/C++ extensions

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Writing C/C++ extension is scary & painful Manual memory management Segfaults Data Races

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Other options? ● Cython ● Numba ● PyPy ● ...

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What’s the main ask here for us? C/C++ ‘s Performance, Portability & Embeddability With Guaranteed Safety

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Rust is a system programming language that has great control like C/C++, delivers productivity like in Python, and is super safe.

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Zen of Rust Memory Safety without Garbage Collection Rich Typesystem High level iterators Freedom from data race Welcoming Community

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Facts & Figures

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Speeding up crypto on Wire desktop apps https://medium.com/@wireapp/speeding-up-crypto-on-wire-desktop-apps-3ff37fc98c3f Up to 141× faster

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Fixing Python Performance with Rust https://blog.sentry.io/2016/10/19/fixing-python-performance-with-rust.html

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Snips Uses Rust to Build an Embedded Voice Assistant

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Tokio MiniHTTP The library is a proof-of-concept implementation of a simple HTTP/1.1 server using Tokio. http://aturon.github.io/blog/2016/08/11/futures/

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2016 -18 For the third year in a row, Rust is stackoverflow's most loved language https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/

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Friends of Rust Organizations running Rust in production. (https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/friends.html)

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History: How did it all begin?

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Browsers Compete for performance & need Safety at its core

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Gradual adoption works.

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Rust is easy to learn!

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Variables

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Functions

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Flow control

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Flow control

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Looping

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Types

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Package Manager

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Ownership The act, state, or right of possessing something

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Garbage Collection Heap Memory Circle(5) Circle(5) Circle(5)

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Referencing Now both bookingService and repairService hold a reference to vehicle

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Same implementation in Rust Doesn't compile!

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Ownership ● Rust moves ownership by default ● The owner has the right to destroy the thing it owns ● The memory is freed as soon as the owned variable goes out of it's scope ● Hence vehicle may already be destroyed at the point when it's passed to repair_service ● Rust catches these errors at compile time

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Borrowing The act, state, or right of possessing something

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Making it work in Rust Lending things is the key!

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Borrowing ● A reference is passed without transferring ownership ● One can borrow immutable (&) or mutable (&mut) but not both at the same time ● Shared ownership can be achieved through special pointers with runtime checks

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Mutability Rules ● All variables are immutable by default ● Only one mutable reference at a time ( But as many immutable &’s as you want ) ● Mutable references block all other access (The &mut must go out of scope before using other &’s )

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Yes !!! Safe memory management without GC

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High-level iterators in Rust

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High-level iterators Execution time : ~ 250 ms

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High-level iterators

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Rayon ~ 50 ms

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custom data type in Rust

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Struct ● Structs are like lightweight classes ● They can have fields ● They can be instantiated

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Struct But not partially !

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Struct Rust has option enum for such cases. Every Option is either Some and contains a value, or None, and does not.

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Struct can have methods

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Traits Traits are Rust’s sole notion of interface Traits must be brought into scope with use It has to be looked up in a vtable at run time ~ DYNAMIC DISPATCH

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Generics talk is now generic with a Talk trait bound The compiler generates specialized code ~ Static Dispatch Zero -Cost Abstraction !!

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Developing & Shipping Rust ext. in Python modules

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How does this work? ● A Foreign Function Interface is a way for a programming language to define functions and enable a different (foreign) programming language to call those functions ● Based on platform-dependant C application binary interface ● Rust produces efficient C bindings

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Rust is ideal for creating and using FFI

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Rust FFI capabilities ● Building the project ● Create the extensions

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Interfacing & building the python module ● build.py ● setup.py

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Other libs ● setuptools-rust https://pypi.org/project/setuptools-rust/ ● milksnake https://github.com/getsentry/milksnake

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Rust-Cpython

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Rust-Cpython : Integration ● Import the dependencies ● Write the rust equivalent logic ● Export the rust function

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Rust-Cpython : Benchmarks

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Tools ● rustup: the Rust toolchain installer ● rustfmt : the Rust code formatting tool ● rust-clippy : Rust code linter ● Cargo : package manager ● ...

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67 Community Photo credit: David McSpadden https://www.flickr.com/photos/familyclan/15535822737/

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68 RFC Process

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Summary

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When should you use Rust? ● Rewrite modules of your code that are computationally heavy (Complex math optimizations etc) ● For accessing the hardware(ex :- IOT applications, device drivers, GPU’s etc) ● Implementing advance concurrency paradigms ● Python to Rust calls are non-trivial, so be wise!

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What does Rust have to offer? ● Modern C/C++ replacement ● Memory Safety without Garbage Collection ● No runtime needed ● Rich Typesystem ● Strong Functional Programming influence