[SciPy-dev] Restructuring of Chaco/Kiva/FreeType into SciPy

[eric jones]

> > There will also be corresponding changes made to various 'setup.py'
> > and 'setup_xxx.py' scripts to support building Chaco/Kiva as part of
> > SciPy, and also to allow them to be built stand-alone, apart from
the
> > rest of SciPy.
> 
> I suggest keeping only one setup script, 'setup_xxx.py', per module.

I was thinking we would keep a setup.py file in the modules that are
"stand-alone" so that they could be built using the standard 

	python setup.py install

process.  The setup.py file would refer to the setup_xxx.py file for all
the module specific configuration, but would allow more elaborate setup.
For example, the setup.py script for chaco would have a
"--with-dependencies" flag that, when set, would gather up the
kiva,freetype, and other dependency modules into one
build/install/sdist/bdist or whatever.  

Frankly, I'm struggling to come up with a sane way of handling the
dependencies, separate packages, etc.  I am very ready for the build
process to shake out though.  Even experienced really struggle with the
process.

> 
> > I'm hoping that any CVS wizards out there can suggest the best way
to
> > do this, without creating any more CVS gunk (Attic files, etc.) than
> > necessary. For example, could we simply move directories around?
What
> > are the pros and cons of doing that versus a large number of
> > add/delete operations?
> 
> Moving CVS directories is discussed in
> 
>   http://www.gnu.org/manual/cvs-1.9/html_node/cvs_69.html
> 
> But how desired is that one can retrive older versions of these
modules?
> 
> It seems that after renaming CVS directories, one looses their commit
> history (in the sense of the last sentence in the above link, though
> with some hacking on CVSROOT/history file (e.g. changing world/chaco
> to world/scipy/chaco) it should be possible to preserve the commit
> history, but that is theoretically, I have never done that myself nor
do
> not know if anyone else have tried that).
> 
> Safer approach would be to commit chaco, kiva, freetype modules to
SciPy
> as new modules while still keeping original chaco and kiva CVS
> repositories, but only in read-only mode so that one can still see the
> commit history for references.
> And later on, when the original chaco and kiva CVS repositories are
not
> used/needed anymore, they can be simply removed or archived (though,
this
> will save only 20MB of disk space).
> 
> 
> Another question: Do you want to move chaco, kiva, freetype modules
before
> or after releasing scipy-0.2?

Well, I had originally thought we shouldn't.  But, we really need to get
Chaco's CVS location and build process ironed out before Christmas (this
week really).  So, I want to move it now.

This, however, doesn't mean it needs to role into the SciPy-0.2 release.
We can simply leave chaco, kiva, and freetype out of the setup.py files
and proceed with SciPy-0.2 as if they don't exist.

The only sorta hard part in building chaco is the freetype module which
relies on weave.  I built it on RH 7.3, 8.0 (gcc 3.2) and windows today,
and will try OS X and Sun tonight.  My expectation is that we can have
the chaco build process fairly stable by the end of the week.

So, what do you think?  Should we put an "alpha" version of chaco in
SciPy-0.2, or should we forget about it and get the rest of the build
process ironed out?  

eric