[SciPy-Dev] Bundling Boost?

[Pauli Virtanen]

Hi,

I'd like to consider replacing some of the function implementations in
scipy.special with versions from the C++ Boost library, cf.
http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_51_0/libs/math/doc/sf_and_dist/html/index.html

The reason is that these implementations appear to be made with more
care than what we use currently, and behave more correctly in corner
cases (cf. e.g. ticket #1740).

To minimize work, it would be useful just to use the Boost functions
direcly, rather than doing manual C transcriptions. The drawback here is
that the portion of Boost library required weights about 8 MB of source
code, and we would most likely like to bundle it, as it is not really a
standard part of many installations. This does not reflect much on the
compiled binary size, however.

I'm not 100 % certain about the compiler support. Perhaps C++ is already
mature enough to work across the platforms we care about.

I'm not aware of many good BSD-compatible floating-point special
function libraries, so if you know others, or would be opposed to
bundling Boost, please chime up!

-- 
Pauli Virtanen