ouroboros

The issue with crowding out alternative Pythons is a socio-political one. The C-API issue is as well, as you said Python extensions are over coupled to the runtime. ctypes and subsequently cffi fixed this 10+ years ago. 1. Decouple the extension mechanism. Use cffi 2. Modularize the batteries Each alternative Python has to re-implement large swaths of the stdlib. The code is the spec in Python. Stackless got the PyPy treatment before PyPy even existed. Besides PyPy, we now have graalpython, rustpython and ... https://github.com/beeware/ouroboros/issues/21 points to a python stdlib I had never heard of, https://github.com/pfalcon/pycopy-lib The point is, the core CPython devs need stop being so selfish with their toys. The greater Python ecosystem is diverse in spite of their actions not because of it.

The full standard library is a work in progress; at the moment, there's only a couple of key parts of sys, os, and the like. But Ouroboros (https://github.com/pybee/ouroboros) is a project to develop a full standard library that can be integrated into any Python implementation. Effectively, you can use all the bits of the standard library that are written in Python by just compiling them; the rest requires native integration (which is the work in progress).

Granted, there are restrictions. However, a lot of those restrictions have disappeared in recent releases, and more are disappearing all the time. Iterators, generators, xrange, I expect those all to be included in due time. Additionally, re: the standard library, there is a project called Ouroboros[1] that replicates the standard library in pure python, and there was discussion regarding integrating that into Transcrypt. You're right, it's not there yet, and I'm interested in it for purely theoretical reasons (I personally don't think I'd ever use Transcrypt for anything in production), but I think it holds great potential. [1]: https://github.com/pybee/ouroboros/tree/master/ouroboros