Picolo stands for nothing in particular, it was the only name beginning with pico that came to mind at definition time (I used to play the flute in my childhood).
Picolo proposes a simple component model to allow the introduction to component technologies without the technical overload of most current component-based solutions. In a few hundred lines of Python code, the picolo framework allows you to dive into a component model and to study, modify, and extend its implementation.
Similar (in the spirit but certainly not in the impact) to ObjVLisp, Picolo offers a set of classes for defining components as well as experimenting the inner mechanism of components and component-based applications.
An introduction to components and to the Picolo framework is available in the following paper presented at Europython 2005.
It is provided as a python module using distutil. To install Picolo as a module to your system just use the setup.py script for building (as lambda user) and for installing (as root / admin). Then Picolo is widely available on your system.
picolo-0.12.0 $ python setup.py build
picolo-0.12.0 $ sudo python setup.py install
The example folder of the distributed package contains examples of code using the framework.
picolo v0.12.0 source archive (Requires the Picorine framework.)