[Numpy-discussion] Proposal: split numpy.distutils into it's own package

[Kevin Sheppard]

Separating it is definitely a good idea.  The only thing that I think would
be better would be if they key features that are not in setuptools could be
added there so that NumPy distutils could eventually be retired.

Kevin

On Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 08:12 Dustin Spicuzza <dustin at virtualroadside.com>
wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> [copied from https://github.com/numpy/numpy/issues/17620, as requested
> by the feature request guidelines]
>
> Cross-compiling scipy and other projects that depend on numpy's
> distutils is a huge pain right now, because to do it [in addition to
> lots of other details that you have to get right] you have to have both
> a native and cross-compiled version of numpy installed. It seems pretty
> unreasonable that I need a native version of numpy installed to compile
> scipy. One might ask, why is this needed?
>
> Well, scipy's setup.py uses numpy's distutils fork for the fortran
> support (I think). Because numpy.distutils is a subpackage of numpy, if
> you're working with a cross-compiled version of numpy, it eventually
> tries to import some .so that wasn't compiled for your host and
> everything dies -- thus you have to have a native numpy installed to
> allow numpy.distutils to import correctly.
>
> As far as I can tell, numpy's distutils fork is pure python and doesn't
> actually use anything else in numpy itself, and so is completely
> separable from numpy. If it were its own top-level package that scipy et
> al could use, then cross-compiling would be significantly less tricky.
>
> The mechanics of this would work like so:
>
> * contents of numpy.distutils would be moved to 'numpy_distutils' package
> * importing numpy.distutils would raise a deprecation warning and
> redirect to numpy_distutils, probably using import hook magic
> * scipy and other packages would now utilize numpy_distutils instead of
> numpy.distutils at build time
>
> Initially, I considered proposing creating a separate pypi package for
> numpy_distutils, but I expect that would be more trouble than it's
> worth. One could also propose creating a new PEP 517 build backend, or
> move to cmake, or other huge changes, but those also seem more trouble
> than they're worth.
>
> Thanks for your consideration.
>
> Dustin
>
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