[SciPy-dev] Is it ok to depend on ctypes for scipy code ?

[Robert Kern]

Brian Granger wrote:
> One of the big uses for ctypes though is for calling shared libraries
> that "already exist."  For instance things like BLAS, LAPACK, MPI can
> all be called this way.  It seems like the main objection is for cases
> where the shared library is not yet built.  My feeling is that if
> foo.so can be installed using one of the package managers or through
> ./configure/make/make install, it is not as big of an issue.  Granted,
> such a situation could possibly create a new external dependency which
>  might not be wanted, but the actual issue of building the .so sort of
> goes away.

Right, and that works great for installations where you can actually control all
of that. For generally distributable Python packages, this is rarely the case.
We can't even rely on the BLAS and LAPACK libraries having predictable names
(not to mention the FORTRAN call and symbol name conventions).

I stand by my "not in scipy."

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
 that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
 an underlying truth."
  -- Umberto Eco