[SciPy-user] Multiple versions of functions ?

[Travis Oliphant]

Gary wrote:

>Yes, that's it.  I tried to install from ground zero, and I begin to 
>realize I don't quite understand the organization ...
>  
>
Your feedback is essential.  We want to minimize confusion.  There are a 
lot of people we are trying to bring together and they all have their 
"way to view" the situation.  No doubt there are still confusions.

>WinXP.  I wiped out my site-packages/scipy, but left scipy_base, 
>scipy_distutils, scipy_test.  (are they still valid in the "new scipy" ?)
>  
>
No.  These are useless for the new scipy (they won't even be looked 
at).  They have become

scipy.base
scipy.distutils
scipy.test

>Grabbed the current SVN, and compiled using mingw  (without ATLAS) using
>
>python setup.py config --compiler=mingw32 build --compiler=mingw32 install
>
>No errors, and scipy.fft and scipy.fftpack.fft point to the same 
>function.  Progress.
>  
>
Great....

What you have now is officially called scipy_core  (that's it's package 
name).  Sometimes it's referred to as SciPy Core or just Core between 
the initiated.

SciPy Core is a replacement for all of Numeric (and for most of 
numarray.  There are a few numarray packages that are not included in 
scipy core --- not sure if these will ever be part of the core or just 
add-ons --- that will have to be decided. 

Numeric included some basic fft, linear algebra, and random number 
routines.  These (and a bit more) are all included in scipy core and can 
be referenced as

scipy.fftpack
scipy.linalg
scipy.random

If you install full scipy then  scipy.fftpack and scipy.linalg become 
the expanded versions with expanded and better functionality based on 
FORTRAN interfaces.   The basic versions are always available under 
scipy.basic.linalg and scipy.basic.fftpack if you want to only ever use 
the scipy core version. 

This approach allows you to use scipy.linalg.inv and have it map to the 
scipy_core version if that's all the user has installed or the full 
scipy version if that's what the user has installed.

-Travis