[SciPy-User] [announce] scikits.sparse v0.1, wrapper for CHOLMOD (and hopefully more)

[Nathaniel Smith]

As mentioned previously[0], I've written a scipy.sparse-compatible
wrapper for the CHOLMOD sparse Cholesky routines. I considered making
it 'scikits.cholmod' (cf. scikits.umfpack), but creating a new scikit
every time someone needs a sparse linear algebra routine seems like it
will become very silly very quickly, so instead I hereby declare the
existence of 'scikits.sparse' as a home for all such routines. (Of
course, it currently only contains scikits.sparse.cholmod).

Manual:
  http://packages.python.org/scikits.sparse/
Source:
  hg clone https://scikits-sparse.googlecode.com/hg/ scikits.sparse
Homepage:
  http://code.google.com/p/scikits-sparse
Bug tracker:
  http://code.google.com/p/scikits-sparse/issues/list
Mailing list:
  scikits-sparse-discuss at lists.vorpus.org
  http://lists.vorpus.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/scikits-sparse-discuss

I would have sucked scikits.umfpack in, except that it uses SWIG,
which I don't understand and am not really inspired to learn, at least
for a v0.1 release. Also, there appear to still be some sort of
complicated entanglements with scipy.sparse (e.g. in at least part of
the test suite). Anyone feeling inspired? It's not a very complicated
interface; just rewrapping it might be as easy as anything else.

SuiteSparseQR would also be a natural fit, since it uses the (already
wrapped) CHOLMOD matrix interfaces.

[0] http://mail.scipy.org/pipermail/scipy-dev/2009-November/013244.html

Share and enjoy,
-- Nathaniel