[Numpy-discussion] Waf or scons/numscons for a C/Fortran/Cython/Python project -- what's your recommendation?

[Dag Sverre Seljebotn]

Kurt Smith wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Dag Sverre Seljebotn
> <dagss at student.matnat.uio.no> wrote:
>
>   
>> Not that I really know anything about it, but note that one of the
>> purposes of David's toydist is to handle the install stage independently
>> of the build system used. That is, it is able to create e.g. Python eggs
>> without using setuptools.
>>
>> The thing is, installing Python software is something of a mess, and
>> every system would want this done differently (making an Ubuntu package,
>> creating a DMG, or creating a Python egg are all different things). So I
>> think it makes sense to decouple this from the build in the tools that
>> are used.
>>     
>
> Yep.  Good points.  I expect once I get the configure/build stages in
> a working state, I'll have most of what people need.  The install
> stage is less crucial, at least for the first version.  Seems like
> people would like the system to just create a .so file in the current
> directory, and leave it at that.  If I can get that working on all
> platforms I'll be very happy :-)
>
>   
>> Of course, toydist is beta, and I dare say you have enough beta
>> dependencies for fwrap already :-)
>>     
>
> :-)
>
> Hopefully that can be remedied that in the coming months, at least
> from the fparser and memoryview-support-in-Cython side of things.
>   

Obviously I didn't get around to that yet...

As for the build systems, some things to consider (I have no clue myself 
as to waf vs. scons):
 - There's already primitive scons support for Cython, but I'm sure it 
wouldn't be hard to add to waf
 - Whatever you pick is likely to become the best supported build system 
for Cython code in the future, I think, due to our interest in working on it
 - Does waf have infrastructure for parsing files and finding 
dependencies? I know that in Scons one can plug in a "Cython parser", 
which checks the dependencies (which pxds are used, basically), so that 
pyx files are rebuilt automatically when pxds they depend on change. I'm 
sure waf supports something similar, if not I'd say it disqualifies it.

My own hunch is that waf looks better, but scons has a larger mind share 
and Cython support right now in scientific Python, and that both must be 
supported eventually, so why not do scons first... *shrug*

But like you I'm anxious to hear from more non-Cython devs as well on 
this matter.

Dag Sverre