[Numpy-discussion] Re: Trouble installing numarray on Solaris

[Todd Miller]

On Mon, 2005-07-04 at 13:40 +0200, Thomas Heller wrote:
> Todd Miller <jmiller at stsci.edu> writes:
> 
> > On Fri, 2005-07-01 at 15:02 -0700, Russell E. Owen wrote:
> >> A user of my application reports that installing numarray 1.3.2 on 
> >> Solaris using Python 2.3.1 has run into trouble:
> >> 
> >>   prompt> python
> >>   Python 2.3.1 (#1, Sep 30 2003, 20:29:58) [C] on sunos5
> >>   Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
> >>   >>> import numarray
> >>   Fatal Python error: Call to API function without first calling
> >>   import_libnumarray() in Src/_convmodule.c
> >>   Abort (core dumped)
> >
> > It looks vaguely like an binary API mismatch of some kind... or one of
> > you numarray modules is stale or broken.  To restate the obvious,   it's
> > likely that numarray won't import (in C!) because import_libnumarray()
> > is very defintely in _convmodule.c.  Since it's there and the API
> > pointer was not initialized,  the libnumarray import failed.
> 
> To the numarray authors/maintainers: Isn't it a bit harsh to call
> Py_FatalError() in the init function?

That's an interesting observation...  the old recourse was to dump core
by calling through a NULL function pointer.  :-)

Since this error can occur in the context of any API function, possibly
called from any sub-function within an extension function,  I'm not sure
there is a soft & general way to handle it:  getting it implies the
function must fail but that can't always be reported.  I'm open to
suggestions... it's just not obvious to me how to handle it better.

I've concluded that the message is overly specific and may shorten it to
just the facts:  "call through NULL numarray C-API pointer in <module>."

Regards,
Todd