Hacking Python's grammar

Getting the source

Download the source with git,

git clone https://github.com/python/cpython.git

or you can download a zip file.

Compiling

Windows

PCbuild\build.bat -e -d

macOS and Linux

Generate the Makefile with

./configure 

Then we can build Python.

make

Compiling with ccache (optional)

If we're compiling on macOS or Linux, we can speed things up with ccache. Compiling with ccache lets us only compile files that have changed so that we don't have to recompile the entire project because one file changed.

Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install ccache

Arch Linux

pacman -S ccache

macOS (requires Homebrew)

brew install ccache

To use ccache when we compile Python, we just have to make two changes to the Makefile. We need to replace the following lines

CC=   gcc -pthread
CXX=  g++ -pthread

with the following.

CC=   ccache gcc -pthread
CXX=  ccache g++ -pthread

Now everytime running make after the first, the compilation will be much quicker.

Our first change

In Python, we have to import modules before we can use them,

but we've decided we don't like the word import and want to giveme modules instead.

Looking at the grammar section on Python's dev-guide gives us some clues on how to start. The first thing on that checklist says to look in the file "Grammar/Grammar". When we look through it, we search for the word import and we find this:

So let's add a rule to use giveme.

Now, after we make we can use our new syntax.