[SciPy-Dev] when to drop numpy 1.5.x/1.6.x support?

[Warren Weckesser]

On 12/14/14, Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 13, 2014 at 10:22 PM, Daπid <davidmenhur at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 13 December 2014 at 13:34, Lars Buitinck <larsmans at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > I don't, but I just checked the NumPy version that comes with various
>> > Linux distros so we can see what people are likely to have. There is
>> > no Ubuntu long-term support release that ships 1.5, only 1.4 (10.04)
>> > or 1.6 (12.04) [1]. Debian doesn't list 1.5 for any of its releases
>> > either [2]. CentOS 6 ships 1.4 [3], while CentOS 7 ships 1.7.1 [4].
>>
>
> Thanks for checking. The most recent Ubuntu LTS and CentOS releases are
> good data points in general I'd say. In this case Ubuntu (and Debian
> stable) are on 1.6.x, so keep that but drop 1.5.x then?


+1 for dropping 1.5.x.    (I'm neutral on 1.6 support.)

Warren


>
> If you are using your OS's Numpy, you are likely to grab Scipy from there
>> too.
>>
>> As far as I know, the only reason why someone would not upgrade Numpy
>> is because they can't touch their systems, in which case the existence
>> of a newer version of Scipy is equally irrelevant. Furthermore,
>> compiling Numpy is easier than Scipy, so if you can update the later,
>> you should be able to upgrade both.
>>
>
> A lot more packages depend on numpy than on scipy, so upgrading numpy can
> have way more impact. And there may be institutes/companies that ship a
> fixed version of numpy that needs to be supported for a long time.
>
>
>> I think never versions of Scipy should just target maintained versions
>> of Numpy, for some definition of "maintained".
>>
>
> In principle only the last released numpy version gets new bugfix point
> releases, in exceptional cases maybe one version further back. So there's a
> good chance we'll get a numpy 1.9.2, little chance for a 1.8.3 and close to
> zero chance for a 1.7.3. I don't think that we can consider dropping numpy
> 1.7.x or 1.8.x support.
>
> Ralf
>