[SciPy-dev] Introductions, sparse matrix support

[Robert Cimrman]

Travis Oliphant wrote:
> Ed Schofield wrote:

>>I've made small contributions to PySparse in the past and briefly 
>>discussed the idea of merging PySparse into SciPy with Roman Geus by 
>>email.  His comment in April was:
>>
>>"So far I  have not had contacts to the scipy people, and admittedly I 
>>have never even installed scipy. When creating pysparse (some years ago 
>>now) I liked the idea of smaller well-definied packages more, than a big 
>>collection dependent packages. "
>> 
  >>I broadly agree with this philosophy, and it has served PySparse
>>development well until now, but in this case I think that there's value 
>>to the community in having a well-integrated core of matrix 
>>functionality (sparse and dense) and one set of prerequisites and 
>> 
>>
>>interfaces rather than several.
>> 
>>
> 
> Yes, I would like to see some standardization in the sparse stuff.  With 
> you, Robert, Dan, and Jonathan coming aboard, it looks like there is a 
> critical mass of people who are able to make it happen. 

I am amazed how much activity generated my e-mail two weeks ago! 
Obviously the time for the sparse module has ripen :-)

>>I'd be happy to work with Jonathan, Dan, and Robert on sparse matrix 
>>support in SciPy, integrating PySparse code with Travis and Robert's 
>>UMFPACK wrapper.  Perhaps we could even find support among other 
>>PySparse developers.  PySparse currently depends on Numeric, and will 
>>need porting to SciPy Core eventually...

PySparse contains umfpack v4.1, right? Then if it is going to go into 
scipy tree, having me wrapping v4.4 separately would be useless - we (me 
if you like) could just update what already is in PySparse...

We should settle first on the sparse matrix implementation to use and 
then care about wrapping related solvers (who almost always use the 
CSR/CSC format). I am keenly waiting on the benchmark results of 
Jonathan and Dan... (hoping that some work remains for me on Monday (a 
trip to Berlin tomorrow)).

cheers,
r.