Rust vs. C for Python Libraries: Evaluating Rust-Compatible Bindings Toolchains

TL;DR

This paper compares Rust-compatible bindings toolchains for Python, specifically PyO3, ctypes, and cffi, focusing on performance and ease of use, demonstrating Rust's potential for high-performance Python extensions.

Contribution

It provides a comparative evaluation of Rust's PyO3 toolchain against traditional C-based bindings, highlighting performance benefits and usability considerations.

Findings

PyO3 achieves state-of-the-art performance.

Rust bindings simplify interfacing with Python.

Performance gains over traditional C bindings.

Abstract

The Python programming language is best known for its syntax and scientific libraries, but it is also notorious for its slow interpreter. Optimizing critical sections in Python entails special knowledge of the binary interactions between programming languages, and can be cumbersome to interface manually, with implementers often resorting to convoluted third-party libraries. This comparative study evaluates the performance and ease of use of the PyO3 Python bindings toolchain for Rust against ctypes and cffi. By using Rust tooling developed for Python, we can achieve state-of-the-art performance with no concern for API compatibility.