[Distutils] Handling the binary dependency management problem

[Chris Barker - NOAA Federal]

On Dec 5, 2013, at 1:12 PM, Oscar Benjamin <oscar.j.benjamin at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Yes, I wouldn't want that kind of bad PR getting around about
> scientific Python "Python is slower than Matlab" etc.
>
Well, is that better or worse that 2% or less people finding they
can't run it on their old machines....

> It seems as if there is a need to extend the pip+wheel+PyPI system
> before this can fully work for numpy.

Maybe, in this case, but with the whole fortran ABI thing, yes.

> You mentioned in another message that a post-install script seems best
> to you.

What would really be best is run-time selection of the appropriate lib
-- it would solve this problem, and allow users to re-distribute
working binaries via py2exe, etc. And not require opening a security
hole in wheels...

Not sure how hard that would be to do, though.

> 3) Upload wheels for Windows to somewhere other than PyPI e.g.
> SourceForge pending a distribution solution that can detect SSE
> support on Windows.

The hard-core "I want to use python instead of matlab" users are being
re-directed to Anaconda or Canopy anyway. So maybe sub-optimal
binaries on pypi is OK.

By the way, anyone know what Anaconda and Canopy do about SSE and a good BLAS?


> I think it would be good to have a go at wheels even if they're not
> fully ready for PyPI (just in case some other issue surfaces in the
> process).

Absolutely!

- Chris