The MicroPython Core Runtime

This chapter details the core components of MicroPython including the compiler, Memory Management, known optimizations, core and dynamic models and a summary of what happens when you run a MicroPython program.

For purposes of this chapter, the location of focus is the py directory.

The compiler

The compilation process in MicroPython involves the following steps:

• The lexer converts the stream of text that makes up a MicroPython program into tokens.
• The parser then converts the tokens into an abstract syntax (parse tree).
• Then bytecode or native code is emitted based on the parse tree.

Changing the grammar

MicroPython’s grammar is based on the CPython grammar and is defined in py/grammar.h. This grammar is what is used to parse MicroPython source files.

There are two functions you need to know to define a grammar rule i.e DEF_RULE or DEF_RULE_NC. DEF_RULE allows you to define a rule with a compile function.

A simple grammar definition with a compile function looks like the following:

DEF_RULE(add1_stmt, c(add1_stmt), and(2), tok(KW_ADD))

The second argument c(add1_stmt) is the corresponding compile function that should be implemented in py/compile.c for this rule.

The third important argument can be or or and. This specifies the number of nodes associated with a statement. For example, in this case, our add1 statement is similar to ADD1 in assembly language. It takes one numeric argument and adds 1 to it. Therefore, the add1_stmt has two nodes associated with it. One for the statement itself i.e add1 and the other for its argument.

Finally, the fourth argument in this example is the token associated with the rule. This token should be defined in the lexer by editing py/lexer.h.

Defining the same rule without a compile function is achieved by using the DEF_RULE_NC function and omitting the compile function argument:

DEF_RULE_NC(add1_stmt, and(2), tok(KW_ADD))

The remaining arguments take on the same meaning.

Note

The function DEF_RULE or DEF_RULE_NC takes other arguments. For an in-depth understanding of supported parameters, see py/grammar.h. on what parameters are supported, see py/grammar.h.

Changing the lexer

Every rule defined in the grammar should have a token associated with it and defined in py/lexer.h. Add this token by editing the _mp_token_kind_t enum:

typedef enum _mp_token_kind_t {
 ...
 ...
 P_TOKEN_KW_OR,
 MP_TOKEN_KW_PASS,
 MP_TOKEN_KW_RAISE,
 MP_TOKEN_KW_RETURN,
 MP_TOKEN_KW_TRY,
 MP_TOKEN_KW_WHILE,
 MP_TOKEN_KW_WITH,
 MP_TOKEN_KW_YIELD,
 MP_TOKEN_KW_ADD1,
} mp_token_kind_t;

Since, we are adding a keyword, edit py/lexer.c to add the new keyword:

STATIC const char *const tok_kw[] = {
 "False",
 "None",
 "True",
 "__debug__",
 "and",
 "as",
 "assert",
 #if MICROPY_PY_ASYNC_AWAIT
 "async",
 "await",
 #endif
 "break",
 "class",
 "continue",
 "def",
 "del",
 "elif",
 "else",
 "except",
 "finally",
 "for",
 "from",
 "global",
 "if",
 "import",
 "in",
 "is",
 "lambda",
 "nonlocal",
 "not",
 "or",
 "pass",
 "raise",
 "return",
 "try",
 "while",
 "with",
 "yield",
 "add1",
};

Notice the keyword is named depending on what you want it to be. For consistency, maintain the naming standard accordingly.

Note

The order of these keywords in py/lexer.h should match the order of tokens in the enum defined in py/lexer.h.

Parsing

The parser takes the tokens produced by the lexer and converts them to an abstract syntax tree (AST) or parse tree. The implementation for the parser is defined in py/parse.c.

The parser also maintains a table of constants for use in different aspects of parsing, similar to what a symbol table does.

Several optimizations like constant folding on integers for all operations i.e logical, binary, unary, etc, optimizing enhancements on parenthesis around expressions are performed during this phase and optimizations on strings.

It’s worth noting that docstrings are discarded and not accessible to the compiler. Even optimizations like string interning are not applied to docstrings.

Compiler passes

Like many compilers, MicroPython compiles all code to MicroPython bytecode or native code for execution by the virtual machine. The functionality that achieves this is implemented in compile.c. The most relevant method you should know about is mp_raw_code_t *mp_compile_to_raw_code(mp_parse_tree_t *parse_tree, qstr source_file, bool is_repl).

The compiler compiles the code in several passes.

In the first pass, the compiler computes the stack sizes in scope:

// compile pass 1
comp->emit = emit_bc;
#if MICROPY_EMIT_NATIVE
comp->emit_method_table = &emit_bc_method_table;
#endif
uint max_num_labels = 0;
for (scope_t *s = comp->scope_head; s != NULL && comp->compile_error == MP_OBJ_NULL; s = s->next) {
     #if MICROPY_EMIT_INLINE_ASM
     if (s->emit_options == MP_EMIT_OPT_ASM) {
         compile_scope_inline_asm(comp, s, MP_PASS_SCOPE);
     } else
     #endif
     {
         compile_scope(comp, s, MP_PASS_SCOPE);

         // Check if any implicitly declared variables should be closed over
         for (size_t i = 0; i < s->id_info_len; ++i) {
             id_info_t *id = &s->id_info[i];
             if (id->kind == ID_INFO_KIND_GLOBAL_IMPLICIT) {
                 scope_check_to_close_over(s, id);
             }
         }
     }
..
}

Other computations regarding scopes and identifiers are computed and also at this point the number of labels that will be required in the emitted code is determined and set.

The second and third passes involve computing the code size and emitting the inline assembler code for the different architectures:

// compile pass 2 and 3
#if MICROPY_EMIT_NATIVE
emit_t *emit_native = NULL;
#endif
for (scope_t *s = comp->scope_head; s != NULL && comp->compile_error == MP_OBJ_NULL; s = s->next) {
     #if MICROPY_EMIT_INLINE_ASM
     if (s->emit_options == MP_EMIT_OPT_ASM) {
         // inline assembly
         if (comp->emit_inline_asm == NULL) {
             comp->emit_inline_asm = ASM_EMITTER(new)(max_num_labels);
         }
         comp->emit = NULL;
         comp->emit_inline_asm_method_table = ASM_EMITTER_TABLE;
         compile_scope_inline_asm(comp, s, MP_PASS_CODE_SIZE);
         #if MICROPY_EMIT_INLINE_XTENSA
         // Xtensa requires an extra pass to compute size of l32r const table
         // TODO this can be improved by calculating it during SCOPE pass
         // but that requires some other structural changes to the asm emitters
         #if MICROPY_DYNAMIC_COMPILER
         if (mp_dynamic_compiler.native_arch == MP_NATIVE_ARCH_XTENSA)
         #endif
         {
             compile_scope_inline_asm(comp, s, MP_PASS_CODE_SIZE);
         }
         #endif
         if (comp->compile_error == MP_OBJ_NULL) {
             compile_scope_inline_asm(comp, s, MP_PASS_EMIT);
         }
     } else

The inline assembler code comprises assembly instructions in a Python function. See the inline assembler tutorial for more details.

The other two passes compute the stack and code size, while the last pass emits the final code:

compile_scope(comp, s, MP_PASS_STACK_SIZE);

if (comp->compile_error == MP_OBJ_NULL) {
     compile_scope(comp, s, MP_PASS_CODE_SIZE);
}

if (comp->compile_error == MP_OBJ_NULL) {
 compile_scope(comp, s, MP_PASS_EMIT);
}

Before these passes, there is a selection for the type of code to be emitted which can either be native or bytecode.

switch (s->emit_options) {

     #if MICROPY_EMIT_NATIVE
     case MP_EMIT_OPT_NATIVE_PYTHON:
     case MP_EMIT_OPT_VIPER:
         if (emit_native == NULL) {
             emit_native = NATIVE_EMITTER(new)(&comp->compile_error, &comp->next_label, max_num_labels);
         }
         comp->emit_method_table = NATIVE_EMITTER_TABLE;
         comp->emit = emit_native;
         break;
     #endif // MICROPY_EMIT_NATIVE

     default:
         comp->emit = emit_bc;
         #if MICROPY_EMIT_NATIVE
             comp->emit_method_table = &emit_bc_method_table;
         #endif
         break;
}

The bytecode option is the default but something unique to note for the native code option is that there is another option via VIPER.

Emitting bytecode

For every statement in the code, there is a corresponding function to emit MicroPython bytecode. This function should be written in py/emitbc.c. The implementation of this function looks similar to this:

void mp_emit_bc_yield(emit_t *emit, int kind) {
     MP_STATIC_ASSERT(MP_BC_YIELD_VALUE + 1 == MP_BC_YIELD_FROM);
     emit_write_bytecode_byte(emit, -kind, MP_BC_YIELD_VALUE + kind);
     emit->scope->scope_flags |= MP_SCOPE_FLAG_GENERATOR;
}

We use the yield statement for an example here but the implementation details are similar for other statements. The method emit_write_bytecode_byte() is a wrapper around the main function emit_get_cur_to_write_bytecode() that all functions must call to emit byte code.

Emitting native code

Similar to how bytecode is generated, there should be a corresponding function in py/emitnative.c for each code statement:

STATIC void emit_native_yield(emit_t *emit, int kind) {
 // Note: 1 (yield) or 3 (yield from) labels are reserved for this function, starting at *emit->label_slot

 if (emit->do_viper_types) {
     mp_raise_NotImplementedError(MP_ERROR_TEXT("native yield"));
 }
 emit->scope->scope_flags |= MP_SCOPE_FLAG_GENERATOR;

 need_stack_settled(emit);

 if (kind == MP_EMIT_YIELD_FROM) {

     // Top of yield-from loop, conceptually implementing:
     //     for item in generator:
     //         yield item

     // Jump to start of loop
     emit_native_jump(emit, *emit->label_slot + 2);

     // Label for top of loop
     emit_native_label_assign(emit, *emit->label_slot + 1);
 }

 // Save pointer to current stack position for caller to access yielded value
 emit_get_stack_pointer_to_reg_for_pop(emit, REG_TEMP0, 1);
 emit_native_mov_state_reg(emit, OFFSETOF_CODE_STATE_SP, REG_TEMP0);

 // Put return type in return value slot
 ASM_MOV_REG_IMM(emit->as, REG_TEMP0, MP_VM_RETURN_YIELD);
 ASM_MOV_LOCAL_REG(emit->as, LOCAL_IDX_RET_VAL(emit), REG_TEMP0);

 // Save re-entry PC
 ASM_MOV_REG_PCREL(emit->as, REG_TEMP0, *emit->label_slot);
 emit_native_mov_state_reg(emit, LOCAL_IDX_GEN_PC(emit), REG_TEMP0);

 // Jump to exit handler
 ASM_JUMP(emit->as, emit->exit_label);

 // Label re-entry point
 mp_asm_base_label_assign(&emit->as->base, *emit->label_slot);

 // Re-open any active exception handler
 if (emit->exc_stack_size > 0) {
     // Find innermost active exception handler, to restore as current handler
     exc_stack_entry_t *e = &emit->exc_stack[emit->exc_stack_size - 1];
     for (; e >= emit->exc_stack; --e) {
         if (e->is_active) {
             // Found active handler, get its PC
             ASM_MOV_REG_PCREL(emit->as, REG_RET, e->label);
             ASM_MOV_LOCAL_REG(emit->as, LOCAL_IDX_EXC_HANDLER_PC(emit), REG_RET);
             break;
         }
     }
 }

 emit_native_adjust_stack_size(emit, 1); // send_value

 if (kind == MP_EMIT_YIELD_VALUE) {
     // Check LOCAL_IDX_EXC_VAL for any injected value
     ASM_MOV_REG_LOCAL(emit->as, REG_ARG_1, LOCAL_IDX_EXC_VAL(emit));
     emit_call(emit, MP_F_NATIVE_RAISE);
 } else {
     // Label loop entry
     emit_native_label_assign(emit, *emit->label_slot + 2);

     // Get the next item from the delegate generator
     vtype_kind_t vtype;
     emit_pre_pop_reg(emit, &vtype, REG_ARG_2); // send_value
     emit_access_stack(emit, 1, &vtype, REG_ARG_1); // generator
     ASM_MOV_REG_LOCAL(emit->as, REG_ARG_3, LOCAL_IDX_EXC_VAL(emit)); // throw_value
     emit_post_push_reg(emit, VTYPE_PYOBJ, REG_ARG_3);
     emit_get_stack_pointer_to_reg_for_pop(emit, REG_ARG_3, 1); // ret_value
     emit_call(emit, MP_F_NATIVE_YIELD_FROM);

     // If returned non-zero then generator continues
     ASM_JUMP_IF_REG_NONZERO(emit->as, REG_RET, *emit->label_slot + 1, true);

     // Pop exhausted gen, replace with ret_value
     emit_native_adjust_stack_size(emit, 1); // ret_value
     emit_fold_stack_top(emit, REG_ARG_1);
 }
}

The difference here is we have to handle viper typing.

Optimizations

String interning

having to store duplicate copies of the same string. Primarily, this applies to identifiers in your code, as something like a function or variable name is very likely to appear in multiple places in the code. In MicroPython an interned string is called a QSTR (uniQue STRing).

A QSTR value (with type qstr) is an index into a linked list of QSTR pools. QSTRs store their length and a hash of their contents for fast comparison during the de-duplication process. All bytecode operations that work with strings use a QSTR argument.

Compile-time QSTR generation

In the MicroPython C code, any strings that should be interned in the final firmware are written as MP_QSTR_Foo. At compile time this will evaluate to a qstr value that points to the index of "Foo" in the QSTR pool.

A multi-step process in the Makefile makes this work. In summary, this process has three parts:

1. Find all MP_QSTR_Foo tokens in the code.
2. Generate a static QSTR pool containing all the string data (including lengths and hashes).
3. Replace all MP_QSTR_Foo (via the preprocessor) with their corresponding index.

MP_QSTR_Foo tokens are searched for in two sources:

1. All files referenced in $(SRC_QSTR). This is all C code (i.e. py, extmod, ports/stm32) but not including third-party code such as lib.
2. Additional $(QSTR_GLOBAL_DEPENDENCIES) (which includes mpconfig*.h).

Note: frozen_mpy.c (generated by mpy-tool.py) has its own QSTR generation and pool.

Some additional strings that can’t be expressed using the MP_QSTR_Foo syntax (e.g. they contain non-alphanumeric characters) are explicitly provided in qstrdefs.h and qstrdefsport.h via the $(QSTR_DEFS) variable.

Processing happens in the following stages:

1. qstr.i.last is the concatenation of putting every single input file through the C pre-processor. This means that any conditionally disabled code will be removed, and macros expanded. This means we don’t add strings to the pool that won’t be used in the final firmware. Because at this stage (thanks to the NO_QSTR macro added by QSTR_GEN_EXTRA_CFLAGS) there is no definition for MP_QSTR_Foo it passes through this stage unaffected. This file also includes comments from the preprocessor that include line number information. Note that this step only uses files that have changed, which means that qstr.i.last will only contain data from files that have changed since the last compile.
2. qstr.split is an empty file created after running makeqstrdefs.py split on qstr.i.last. It’s just used as a dependency to indicate that the step ran. This script outputs one file per input C file, genhdr/qstr/...file.c.qstr, which contains only the matched QSTRs. Each QSTR is printed as Q(Foo). This step is necessary to combine the existing files with the new data generated from the incremental update in qstr.i.last.
3. qstrdefs.collected.h is the output of concatenating genhdr/qstr/* using makeqstrdefs.py cat. This is now the full set of MP_QSTR_Foo’s found in the code, now formatted as Q(Foo), one-per-line, with duplicates. This file is only updated if the set of qstrs has changed. A hash of the QSTR data is written to another file (qstrdefs.collected.h.hash) which allows it to track changes across builds.
4. qstrdefs.preprocessed.h adds in the QSTRs from qstrdefs*. It concatenates qstrdefs.collected.h with qstrdefs*.h, then it transforms each line from Q(Foo) to "Q(Foo)" so they pass through the preprocessor unchanged. Then the preprocessor is used to deal with any conditional compilation in qstrdefs*.h. Then the transformation is undone back to Q(Foo), and saved as qstrdefs.preprocessed.h.
5. qstrdefs.generated.h is the output of makeqstrdata.py. For each Q(Foo) in qstrdefs.preprocessed.h (plus some extra hard-coded ones), it outputs QDEF(MP_QSTR_Foo, (const byte*)"hash" "Foo").

Then in the main compile, two things happen with qstrdefs.generated.h:

1. In qstr.h, each QDEF becomes an entry in an enum, which makes MP_QSTR_Foo available to code and equal to the index of that string in the QSTR table.
2. In qstr.c, the actual QSTR data table is generated as elements of the mp_qstr_const_pool->qstrs.

Run-time QSTR generation

Additional QSTR pools can be created at runtime so that strings can be added to them. For example, the code:

foo[x] = 3

Will need to create a QSTR for the value of x so it can be used by the “load attr” bytecode.

Also, when compiling Python code, identifiers and literals need to have QSTRs created. Note: only literals shorter than 10 characters become QSTRs. This is because a regular string on the heap always takes up a minimum of 16 bytes (one GC block), whereas QSTRs allow them to be packed more efficiently into the pool.

QSTR pools (and the underlying “chunks” that store the string data) are allocated on-demand on the heap with a minimum size.

Open addressing

MicroPython dictionaries use a technique called open addressing to resolve collisions. Collisions are very common occurrences and happen when two items happen to hash to the same slot or location. For example, given a hash setup as this:

If there is a request to fill slot 0 with 70, since the slot 0 is not empty, open addressing finds the next available slot in the dictionary to service this request. This sequential search for an alternate location is called probing. There are several sequence probing algorithms but MicroPython uses linear probing that is described in the next.

Linear probing

Linear probing is one of the methods for finding an available address or slot in a dictionary. In MicroPython, it is used with open addressing. To service the request described above, unlike other probing algorithms, linear probing assumes a fixed interval of 1 between probes. The request will therefore be serviced by placing the item in the next free slot which is slot 4:

The same methods i.e open addressing and linear probing are used to search for an item in a dictionary. Assume we want to search for the data item 33. The computed hash value will be 1. Looking at slot 2 reveals 3, at this point, we return True. Searching for 70 is quite different as there was a collision at the time of insertion. Therefore computing the hash value is 0 which is currently holding 44. Instead of simply returning False`, we perform a sequential search starting at point ``1 until the item 70 is found or we encounter a free slot. This is the general way of performing look-ups in hashes:

// not yet found, keep searching in this table
pos = (pos + 1) % set->alloc;

if (pos == start_pos) {
 // search got back to starting position, so index is not in table
 if (lookup_kind & MP_MAP_LOOKUP_ADD_IF_NOT_FOUND) {
     if (avail_slot != NULL) {
         // there was an available slot, so use that
         set->used++;
         *avail_slot = index;
         return index;
     } else {
         // not enough room in table, rehash it
         mp_set_rehash(set);
         // restart the search for the new element
         start_pos = pos = hash % set->alloc;
     }
 } else {
     return MP_OBJ_NULL;
 }
}

Memory Management

Unlike many programming languages such as C/C++, MicroPython hides memory management details from the developer by supporting automatic memory management (AMM). AMM is a technique used by operating systems or applications to automatically manage the allocation and deallocation of memory. This eliminates challenges such as forgetting to free the memory allocated to an object. AMM also avoids the critical issue of using memory that is already released. Automatic memory management takes many forms, one of them being garbage collection (GC).

The garbage collector usually has two responsibilities;

1. Allocate new objects in available memory.
2. Free unused memory.

There are many GC algorithms but MicroPython uses the Mark and Sweep policy for managing memory. This algorithm has a mark phase that traverses the heap marking all live objects while the sweep phase goes through the heap reclaiming all unmarked objects.

Note

The garbage collector automatically runs on the Linux port but may need to be manually enabled for other ports.

Garbage collection functionality in MicroPython is available through the gc built-in module:

>>> x = 5
>>> x
5
>>> import gc
>>> gc.enable()
>>> gc.mem_alloc()
1312
>>> gc.mem_free()
2071392
>>> gc.collect()
19
>>> gc.disable()
>>>

Even when gc.disable() is invoked, collection can be triggered with gc.collect().

The object model

The structure of a MicroPython object is such that is takes up a word-size. That is to say, pointers and addresses take up a machine word of 8 bytes. Pointers can be 8, 16, or 64 bits.

********|********|********|********|********|********|********|********<tag><tag><tag>

In a 1 byte address, the 61 bits will hold a value while the 3 lower bits will hold a tag. This brings us to a concept that MicroPython supports that involves applying a tag to a pointer.

Pointer Tagging

More often than not the lower 3 bits of a pointer are zeroes i.e:

********|********|********|********|********|********|********|********000

These bits are reserved for purposes of storing a tag. A tag is a place holder that is used to store extra information as opposed to introducing a new field to store information usually in the object which may be inefficient.

The tags can store information like if we are dealing with a small integer, interned (small) string or a concrete object as different semantics apply to each of these.

For small integers the mapping is this:

********|..|******01

For a small or interned string:

********|..|******10

While a concrete object that is neither a small integer nor an interned string takes this form:

********|..|******00

Allocation of objects

Small integers take up 8 bytes and will be allocated on the stack and not the heap. This implies that the allocation of such integers does not affect the heap. Similarly, interned strings are small - usually, less of a length less than 10 are stored as an array.

Everything else which is a concrete object is allocated on the heap and its object structure is such that we reserve a field in the object header to store the type of the object.

+++++++++++
+         +
+ type    + object header
+         +
+++++++++++
+         + object items
+         +
+         +
+++++++++++

The heap’s unit of allocation is a block that is to say the heap is further subdivided into blocks of 32 bytes. Another structure also allocated on the heap tracks the allocation of objects in each block. This structure is called a bitmap.

The bitmap tracks whether a block is “free” or “in use” and use two bits to track this state for each block.

The mark-sweep garbage collector manages the objects allocated on the heap. See py/gc.c for the full implementation of these details.

Writing Tests

Tests in MicroPython are written in the path py/tests:

.
 ├── basics
 ├── cmdline
 ├── cpydiff
 ├── esp32
 ├── extmod
 ├── feature_check
 ├── float
 ├── import
 ├── inlineasm
 ├── internal_bench
 ├── io
 ├── jni
 ├── micropython
 ├── misc
 ├── multi_bluetooth
 ├── multi_net
 ├── net_hosted
 ├── net_inet
 ├── perf_bench
 ├── pyb
 ├── pybnative
 ├── qemu-arm
 ├── README
 ├── run-internalbench.py
 ├── run-multitests.py
 ├── run-natmodtests.py
 ├── run-perfbench.py
 ├── run-tests
 ├── run-tests-exp.py
 ├── run-tests-exp.sh
 ├── stress
 ├── thread
 ├── unicode
 ├── unix
 └── wipy

There are subfolders maintained to categorize most tests. Add a test by creating a new file in one of the existing folders or in a new folder.

For example, add the following code in a file print.py in the Unix subdirectory:

def print_one():
 print(1)

print_one()

If you run your tests, this test should appear in the test output:

$ cd ports/unix
$ make tests
skip  unix/extra_coverage.py
pass  unix/ffi_callback.py
pass  unix/ffi_float.py
pass  unix/ffi_float2.py
pass  unix/print.py
pass  unix/time.py
pass  unix/time2.py

If you create a test under a new subfolder, be sure to update the test script run-tests.

Adding a Core module

Like CPython, MicroPython has builtin modules that can be accessed through import statements. An example is the gc module discussed earlier:

>>> import gc
>>> gc.enable()
>>>

MicroPython has several other builtin standard modules like io, uarray etc. Adding a new module involves several modifications

Create the C file in the py directory. In this example, we are adding a new module subinterpreters:

#include "py/builtin.h"
#include "py/gc.h"

#if #if MICROPY_PY_SUB

// list()
STATIC void py_subinterpreters_list(void) {
 gc_collect();
}
MP_DEFINE_CONST_FUN_OBJ_0(subinterpreters_list_obj, py_subinterpreters_list);


STATIC const mp_rom_map_elem_t mp_module_subinterpreters_globals_table[] = {
 { MP_ROM_QSTR(MP_QSTR___name__), MP_ROM_QSTR(MP_QSTR_subinterpreters) },
 { MP_ROM_QSTR(MP_QSTR_list), MP_ROM_PTR(&subinterpreters_list_obj) },
};

STATIC MP_DEFINE_CONST_DICT(mp_module_subinterpreters_globals, mp_module_subinterpreters_globals_table);

const mp_obj_module_t mp_module_subinterpreters = {
 .base = { &mp_type_module },
 .globals = (mp_obj_dict_t *)&mp_module_subinterpreters_globals,
};

MP_REGISTER_MODULE(MP_QSTR_subinterpreters, mp_module_subinterpreters, MICROPY_PY_SUB);

#endif

The implementation includes a definition of all functions related to the module and adds the functions to the module’s global table. It also registers the module with its table of globals:

const mp_obj_module_t mp_module_subinterpreters = {
 .base = { &mp_type_module },
 .globals = (mp_obj_dict_t *)&mp_module_subinterpreters_globals,
};

The module is exposed for use in Python with:

MP_REGISTER_MODULE(MP_QSTR_subinterpreters, mp_module_subinterpreters, MICROPY_PY_SUB);

After the above implementation, expose the module in the builtins header file. Modify the builtins.h file:

extern const mp_obj_module_t mp_module_subinterpreters;

Then modify objmodule.c with the module details:

#if MICROPY_PY_GC
 { MP_ROM_QSTR(MP_QSTR_subinterpreters), MP_ROM_PTR(&mp_module_subinterpreters) },
#endif

If this was a success the module should now be importable:

>>> import subinterpreters
>>> subinterpreters.enable()
>>>

Our list() function currently returns nothing as it calls gc_collect().

The Public C-API

The public C-API comprises functions defined in all C header files in the py directory. Most of the important core runtime C APIS are exposed in runtime.h and obj.h.

An example of such an API is one for LED manipulations exposed in the nrf port:

void led_init(void);
void led_state(board_led_t, int);
void led_toggle(board_led_t);

extern const mp_obj_type_t board_led_type;

At its core, any non-static functions and macros in header files make up the public API and can be used to access very low-level details of MicroPython.