Garbage Collection in JyNI - How to bridge Mark/Sweep and Reference Counting GC

Abstract: Jython is a Java-based Python implementation and the most seamless way to integrate Python and Java. It achieves high efficiency by compiling Python code to Java bytecode and thus letting Java's JIT optimize it - an approach that enables Python code to call Java functions or to subclass Java classes. It enables Python code to leverage Java's multithreading features and utilizes Java's built-in garbage collection (GC). However, it currently does not support CPython's C-API and thus does not support native extensions like NumPy and SciPy. Since most scientific code depends on such extensions, it is not runnable with Jython. Jython Native Interface (JyNI) is a compatibility layer that aims to provide CPython's native C extension API on top of Jython. JyNI is implemented using the Java Native Interface (JNI) and its native part is designed to be binary compatible with existing extension builds [...].