[SciPy-Dev] removing umfpack wrapper

[Ralf Gommers]

Hi all,

This is long overdue, but I think it's time to remove the UMFPACK wrapper
before the next release. I'd like some feedback on how to do that and to
what package (if any) to point existing users.

As for why to remove the wrapper, see:
https://github.com/scipy/scipy/issues/3002
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.scientific.user/20451
Short summary: UMFPACK changed from a BSD-compatible license to GPL at some
point.

The deprecation warning in sparse.linalg has been referring people to
scikits.umfpack until now, however that package has disappeared completely
as far as I can tell. I suspect it was in the old scikits svn repo and was
never moved before that was killed. The alternatives seems to be Pysparse (
http://pysparse.sourceforge.net) and PyUBlasExt (
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/PyUblasExt). Scikits.sparse is dead(-ish) and
doesn't wrap umfpack it looks like. PyUBlasExt has something that looks
like a wrapper but for C++ (?). So can we refer people to pysparse?

Other question: do we call Pysparse instead of scikits.umfpack when
available? And if so, by default or not? Or do we rip out everything that
sits under useUmfpack=True?

Cheers,
Ralf
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