Agenda

• Introduction to Polyglot development
• Getting started with MetaCall Core
• Understanding the underneath of the Core
• Walking through a Polyglot Machine Learning application
• Building a Polyglot application using Core
• Q&A

Problems at hand

• Slow and painful migration of legacy codebases. Example: Java -> Node JS
• Lack of interoperability between libraries across languages. Example: Python -> NodeJS
• Embedding low level libraries or scripts in high-level environments.

Introduction to Polyglot development

Why Polyglot development?

• Help developers find the best possible solution through any framework/library possible.
• Mix toolings, scripts, libraries amongst multiple languages without any friction.
• Embed low-level and high-level code without sacrificing any portability and interoperability.

What is MetaCall?

MetaCall is an Open-Source Polyglot runtime. It brings forward:

• Cross-language imports.
• Multiple language support through a CLI and runtime.
• N:N interoperability with a transparent API.

Demonstration

sum.py

def sum(a, b):
  return a + b

main.js

const { sum } = require('./sum.py');

sum(3, 4); // 7

CLI

metacall main.js

Installation

# Installation using curl
curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/metacall/install/master/install.sh | sh
 
# Installation using wget
wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/metacall/install/master/install.sh | sh
 
# Installation using Docker
docker pull metacall/core
# Installation using curl
curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/metacall/install/master/install.sh | sh
 
# Installation using wget
wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/metacall/install/master/install.sh | sh
 
# Installation using Docker
docker pull metacall/core
# Installation using curl
curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/metacall/install/master/install.sh | sh
 
# Installation using wget
wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/metacall/install/master/install.sh | sh
 
# Installation using Docker
docker pull metacall/core
# Installation using curl
curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/metacall/install/master/install.sh | sh
 
# Installation using wget
wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/metacall/install/master/install.sh | sh
 
# Installation using Docker
docker pull metacall/core
# Installation using curl
curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/metacall/install/master/install.sh | sh
 
# Installation using wget
wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/metacall/install/master/install.sh | sh
 
# Installation using Docker
docker pull metacall/core
# Installation using curl
curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/metacall/install/master/install.sh | sh
 
# Installation using wget
wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/metacall/install/master/install.sh | sh
 
# Installation using Docker
docker pull metacall/core

Architecture of MetaCall

Understanding Ports

• Inner architecture of MetaCall Core is driven by ports.
• Ports offer MetaCall to other languages.
• C API wrappers expose the functions to other languages.
• Monkey Patching is used to make the API transparent for users overall.

Understanding Meta-Object protocol

Understanding Loaders

• Loaders are used for embedding languages into MetaCall.
• Act as plugins for a common interface wrapping the runtimes.
• Loading them dynamically during execution.

Introducting MetaCall FaaS

• MetaCall FaaS allows us to deploy applications built on MetaCall Core
• Provides automated API generation and high performance server over a Kubernetes cluster.
• Zero vendor locking and nudge towards NoOps development

Benchmarks

Walking through a Polyglot Machine Learning application

Building a Polyglot application

What are we going to do?

• Write a simple Python script.
• Inspect the script using MetaCall CLI.
• Load a script module in an Express API.
• Test the API

Projects built using MetaCall

• Acid Cam: Video manipulation using OpenCV which uses MetaCall to embed Python scripts in plugin system.
• Pragma: Language used to build GraphQL APIs which uses MetaCall to import and execute functions in multiple languages.
• Polyglot Kernel: IPython wrapper kernel using MetaCall Core to embed multiple languages into the Jupyter notebook interface.

Q&A

Any questions?

Thanks!

Harsh Bardhan Mishra

@harshcasper

@harsh_casper

This talk on Github: HarshCasper/pycon-my-2021

References

• MetaCall Core
• MetaCall FAQ
• Machine Learning based news scrapper
• MetaCall Core Docs
• Join the Matrix