[AstroPy] Including kcorrect as a astropy affiliated package?

[Taro Sato]

On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 8:24 PM, Erik Tollerud <erik.tollerud at gmail.com> wrote:
> This sounds like a perfect candidate for an affiliated package - we
> probably wouldn't want it in the core right away because it's a
> somewhat specific tool (and we would want it to interact more tightly
> with some of the in-the-work astropy packages), but I could easily see
> it getting merged down the road.
>
> I know the documentation is a bit confusing about what affiliated
> packages are - that will be updated as soon as we've gotten all the
> automatic documentation tools working... but in a nutshell affiliated
> packages are wholly external packages (although we encourage you to
> host them in the astropy github organization, if you're willing), but
> there will be a registry of affiliated packages and a tool to easily
> install them once astropy is installed.  They're also a good way to
> get something eventually included in the astropy core that isn't quite
> "done cooking" yet.
>
> And just so I understand, the package you've written does nothing with
> the IDL layer of kcorrect, right?  It interfaces directly with the
> C-level kcorrect? (I ask because I wrote a function
> astropysics.phot.kcorrect that just wraps the IDL functionality using
> pidly, but that requires that IDL already be installed, so this would
> be much better)



Oh, you've written a wrapper already...  how come I didn't know that!

Right, IDL isn't necessary at all to run the Python version, and
that's the reason for working on the port.  The original kcorrect
isn't a very thin wrapper around its C library, so in order to have
the full functionality that the IDL version currently has, all the
.pro scripts still need to be translated (I've only done what I have
needed for myself so far).  But that isn't so bad. (it's just that IDL
codes are not very fun to read.............)

I browsed through the astropy website and the affiliate thing, hence
my inquiry.  So I'd happy to contribute the whole thing, according to
whatever suggestion that astropy community makes.  I'm looking for a
repository anyways.... it's about 185 MB right now, most auxiliary
data included.

One thing I'd like to make sure, since a lot of effort must have been
put into collecting all the auxiliary data (like throughput curves,
templates, etc.) by Michael and his colleagues, is that if we end up
distributing those things along with the Python package, there needs
to be a way to ensure that the credit for the library goes to him
(which according to the kcorrect website is to cite Blanton et al.
2007 paper).

So before going ahead with the transition, I'd like to make sure that
sort of thing can be worked out well with everyone affected.

Cheers,
Taro