[SciPy-dev] Renaming scipy_core ???

[Robert Kern]

On 12/31/05, Travis Oliphant <oliphant.travis at ieee.org> wrote:
>
> Fernando brings up an interesting point that might be worth some
> discussion.  It's might be too late to have this discussion, but with a
> more stable release coming up, it might not be.
>
> Here is what he says:
>
> > My main point is this: I worry a little that using 'scipy' as a single
> > name
> > for both scipy_core and scipy_full is causing more problems than it
> > solves,
> > and may be an unnecessary long-term headache.  There is the issue of
> > confusion
> > of installation amongst newbies, as well as technical problems with
> > packaging
> > because of file collisions, package manager issues, etc.

> I would like to hear some more opinions about this.  The one that is
> most convincing to me is that
> you can't tell if something comes from full scipy or scipy_core just by
> looking at the import statement.

I, too, think that scipy_core and full scipy providing the Python
package scipy probably causes more problems than it solves. One of
your big concerns, the mistaken impression that the "behemoth" version
of scipy is replacing Numeric is pretty much entirely a product of
this choice. Some problems with packaging simply go away if we rename
the package provided by scipy_core to something else.

> We could call the scipy_core package scicore, or numcore, if that is the
> only concern.

+1 for scicore. It meshes with my preferred name for Fernando's "Scipy
Kits" concept, scikits.

--
Robert Kern
robert.kern at gmail.com