[SciPy-dev] gsl and scipy

[Jochen Küpper]

On Fri, 3 May 2002 11:46:51 +0200 (MEST) arnd baecker wrote:

arnd> I know of pygsl (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pygsl/)
arnd> which at present only covers a small part of gsl.

Feel free to contribute...

arnd> It seems that some of the functionality of gsl is already within
arnd> scipy - does this mean that we would end up with different
arnd> routines doing the same things ...?

Yep.  But that isn't a bad thing by itself.

arnd> Is there the possibility to use f2py etc. to generate the
arnd> necessary wrappers for scipy in an automatic way ?  (on the gsl
arnd> page they recommend: swig, g-wrap) How difficult would this be ?

Pearu,  that's actually exactly the question I was going to ask for
the last couple of months:)


On Fri, 3 May 2002 06:32:29 -0600 Chuck Harris wrote:

Chuck> Interesting. I downloaded the sources and took a look at some
Chuck> of the routines.  Mixed quality, IMNSHO, and I don't always
Chuck> agree with the design choices --- but then, any two people
Chuck> would probably disagree on such issues. 

If you look into the GSL docs thay actually state more than once that
you can find better solutions to some problems on, e.g., netlib, if
you need the best stuff...  

Chuck> I think my divided difference routines are significantly
Chuck> better, for instance, giving eight extra digits of accuracy for
Chuck> some problems.

Feel free to contribute your better routines.  I am sure Brian is
happy to include everything that matches the GSL idea and is better
than what they have.


The problem some people might see is that GSL is GPL'ed software.  You
cannot put it under a BSD license.  But you can of course provide it
as an optional scipy-module to people that are happy with GPL.

Greetings,
Jochen
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