vstr is initially intended to deal with arbitrary-length strings. By
providing a bit lower-level API calls, it will be also useful to deal
with arbitrary-length I/O buffers (the difference from strings is that
buffers are filled from "outside", via I/O).
Another issue, especially aggravated by I/O buffer use, is alloc size
vs actual size length. If allocated 1Mb for buffer, but actually
read 1 byte, we don't want to keep rest of 1Mb be locked by this I/O
result, but rather return it to heap ASAP ("shrink" buffer before passing
it to qstr_from_str_take()).
A big change. Micro Python objects are allocated as individual structs
with the first element being a pointer to the type information (which
is itself an object). This scheme follows CPython. Much more flexible,
not necessarily slower, uses same heap memory, and can allocate objects
statically.
Also change name prefix, from py_ to mp_ (mp for Micro Python).
Paul Sokolovsky
John R. Lenton
ian-v
Damien George