[Numpy-discussion] Re: [SciPy-user] Current thoughts on future directions

[Travis Oliphant]

Michiel Jan Laurens de Hoon wrote:

> Perry Greenfield wrote:
>
>> On Mar 9, 2005, at 11:41 PM, eric jones wrote:
>>
>>> 2. I do question whether weave really be in this core?  I think it 
>>> was in scipy_core before because it was needed to build some of scipy.
>>> 3. Now that I think about it, I also wonder if f2py should really be 
>>> there -- especially since we are explicitly removing any fortran 
>>> dependencies from the core.
>>
>>
>>
>> It would seem to me that so long as:
>>
>> 1) both these tools have very general usefulness (and I think they 
>> do), and
>> 2) are not installation problems (I don't believe they are since they 
>> themselves don't require any compilation of Fortran, C++ or 
>> whatever--am I wrong on that?)
>>
>> That they are perfectly fine to go into the core. In fact, if they 
>> are used by any of the extra packages, they should be in the core to 
>> eliminate the extra step in the installation of those packages.
>>
> -0.
> 1) In der Beschraenkung zeigt sich der Meister. In other words, avoid 
> software bloat.
> 2) f2py is a Fortran-Python interface generator, once the interface is 
> created there is no need for the generator.
> 3) I'm sure f2py is useful, but I doubt that it has very general 
> usefulness. There are lots of other useful Python packages, but we're 
> not including them in scipy-core either.
> 4) f2py and weave don't fit in well with the rest of scipy-core, which 
> is mainly standard numerical algorithms.


I'm of the opinion that f2py and weave should go into the core. 

1) Neither one requires Fortran and both install very, very easily.
2) These packages are fairly small but provide huge utility ---  
inlining fortran or C code is an easy way to speed up Python. People who 
don't "need it" will never realize it's there
3) Building the rest of scipy will need at least f2py already installed 
and it would simplify the process.
4) Enthought packages (to be released in the future and of interest to 
scientists) rely on weave.  Why not make that process easier with a 
single initial install. 
5) It would encourage improvements of weave and f2py from the entire 
community.  
6) The developers of f2py and weave are both scipy developers and so it 
would make sense for their code that forms
a foundation for other work to go into scipy_core. 

-Travis