[Numpy-discussion] dtype repr change?

[Matthew Brett]

Hi,

On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 12:25 PM, Mark Wiebe <mwwiebe at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Matthew Brett <matthew.brett at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 6:54 PM, Mark Wiebe <mwwiebe at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > This was the most consistent way to deal with the parameterized dtype in
>> > the
>> > repr, making it more future-proof at the same time. It was producing
>> > reprs
>> > like "array(['2011-01-01'], dtype=datetime64[D])", which is clearly
>> > wrong,
>> > and putting quotes around it makes it work in general for all possible
>> > dtypes, present and future.
>>
>> I don't know about you, but I find maintaining doctests across
>> versions changes rather tricky.  For our projects, doctests are
>> important as part of the automated tests.  At the moment this means
>> that many doctests will break between 1.5.1 and 2.0.  What do you
>> think the best way round this problem?
>
> I'm not sure what the best approach is. I think the primary use of doctests
> should be to validate that the documentation matches the implementation, and
> anything confirming aspects of a software system should be regular tests.
>  In NumPy, there are platform-dependent differences in 32 vs 64 bit and big
> vs little endian, so the part of the system that changed already couldn't be
> relied on consistently. I prefer systems where the code output in the
> documentation is generated as part of the documentation build process
> instead of being included in the documentation source files.

Would it be fair to summarize your reply as 'just deal with it'?

See you,

Matthew