[IPython-dev] the state if IPython development...

[Ville M. Vainio]

On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 8:35 PM, Glenn H Tarbox, PhD <glenn at tarbox.org> wrote:

>  IPython development has moved, somewhat, to launchpad.  I say somewhat
>  both from messages on this list and the "bleeding edge" installation
>  instructions:
>
>  > bzr co --lightweight lp:ipython
>  > svn co http://ipython.scipy.org/svn/ipython/pyreadline/trunk pyreadline
>
>  although a "unified" tarball is downloadable from:
>  http://ipython.scipy.org/dist/nightly_svn

That tarball only has svn, which has been pretty much discontinued (we
will just dump a bzr snapshot there, for curiosity's sake, but you
shouldn't count on the svn anymore).

>  More concerning is the state of Qt4.  There is a "critical" bug entered
>  in trac: http://projects.scipy.org/ipython/ipython/ticket/208
>
>  Clearly, a QCoreApplication (or QApplication) instance is
>  auto-constructed due to the -q4thread switch... and since calculate.py
>  constructs one also, QT dumps core  (why QT decides to core-dump as the
>  error reporting strategy is beyond me... but thats whats going on).
>
>  Qt4 support is indeed broken... but unnecessarily so. I have Qt4 running
>  with twisted in a naked ipython shell.  I simply construct my qt4reactor
>  and use embedded Qt4 code.  Can't pull in pylab because it renames
>  packages which collide with PyQt4 (in particular, wrapping QObject in a
>  different module... don't get that yet).  and this is beyond the issues
>  associated with QSocketNotifier being invoked from a non-qt thread.  I'm
>  sure this is straightforward but, again, I can't determine whether time
>  spent here is worthwhile.  Seems to me that IPython1's architecture will
>  make most of these problems "just go away" as its a far more
>  comprehensive architecture.

IPython1 does not have a magical solution for any of this, it's pretty
universal stuff. The problem is still the same - gui mainloop has to
be in one thread - but we have that already. Whatever you do in
ipython0 regarding Qt4 will be applicable on IPython1 as well, and
IPython0 isn't going away anytime soon.

Have you considered putting up a bzr branch on launchpad for this
stuff? Darren has been most active regarding Qt4, and we could  use
more hands on this.

-- 
Ville M. Vainio - vivainio.googlepages.com
blog=360.yahoo.com/villevainio - g[mail | talk]='vivainio'