[Numpy-discussion] scipy.scons branch: building numpy and scipy with scons

[Fernando Perez]

On Dec 4, 2007 1:24 PM, Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Fernando Perez wrote:

> > Is this something that really needs to be a code package?  Why can't
> > this knowledge (or at least the easily overridable part of it) be
> > packaged in one or more .conf/.ini plaintext files?  In that way,
> > users could easily grab new data files or tweak the builtin ones, and
> > at build time say
> >
> > setup.py install  --compiler_conf=~/my_tweaked.conf
> >
> > Is that impossible/unreasonable for some reason?
>
> It's not impossible, but there are at least a couple of places where it might be
> unreasonable. For example, look at the get_flags_arch() for Intel compilers:

[...]

I see.  How about an alternate approach: exposing a simple api and
allowing users to declare a *python* file to execfile() at load time
looking for the config?

Something like:

setup.py install  --compiler_conf=~/my_tweaked_config.py

where the config file would be (sketch, not real code here):

def make_flags(compiler, etc...):
  flags = []
  ....
 return flags

There could be a simple API for what functions the config file (down
to their names and signatures) can declare, and if any of them are
declared, they get called and their output is used.  They get fed the
default state of the same variables, so that they can choose to modify
or outright replace them based on the user's need.

The config code would then

user_ns = {}
execfile(user_config_filename,user_ns)
for name,val in user_ns.items():
  if name in approved_functions and callable(val):
    flags[name] = val(*approved_functions[name].default_args)



What say you?

f