[AstroPy] Deployment and packaging

[Chris Sontag]

Since PyRAF is coming up in this discussion, I thought I would clarify a technical point that many of you may know, but that may not be obvious to others.

At installation time, PyRAF has no dependency on IRAF.  PyRAF can even be run without IRAF.  True, most of the things you want to do in PyRAF will not work without IRAF, but STScI is actually working on a few that do (e.g. multidrizzle).

I just thought it should be clarified, concerning installation time dependencies.  This will become more important as more IRAF parts are replaced with Python versions.

Chris


On 6/15/11 11:10 AM, Vicki Laidler wrote:
> Just a quick comment sparked by Erik's comment about PyRAF:
>
>> As for packages that have external, non-Python dependencies (PyRAF for
>> example), I do not by any means think they should be excluded
>> altogether.  But they should be able to work on a multitude of system
>> configurations, and should be excluded from any installation where their
>> dependencies are not bet.  At any rate, where IRAF is concerned the goal
>> should be to gradually replace its pieces with Python modules.  PyRAF is
>> invaluable in the meantime, but in a "perfect" world it wouldn't have to
>> exist at all :)
> Let's remember that there is a segment of the astronomy community that not only does not use IRAF, but wants nothing to do with IRAF, and will actively run away from any project that needs IRAF to be installed. There seems to be an IRAF vs IDL split in the community (though it is by no means hard and fast), and I'd argue that we want to attract the IDL users. The IRAF/PyRAF users already have an on-ramp to Python, and the IDL Astron-library users are our natural user base given that the project goal has repeatedly been stated (not just in this specific discussion, but from the start) in terms of "something like the IDL Astron library for Python".
>
> Vicki
>
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