[SciPy-dev] Re: [Numpy-discussion] Release of scipy core beta will happen next week.

[Travis Oliphant]

Robert Kern wrote:

>Gerard Vermeulen wrote:
>  
>
>>On Sat, 24 Sep 2005 22:51:27 -0600
>>Travis Oliphant <oliphant at ee.byu.edu> wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>At the SciPy 2005 conference I announced that I was hoping to get a beta 
>>>of the new scipy (core) (aka Numeric3 aka Numeric Next Generation) 
>>>released by the end of the conference.  
>>>
>>>This did not happen.  Some last minute features were suggested by 
>>>Fernando Perez that I think will be relatively easy to add and make the 
>>>release that much stronger. 
>>>
>>>Look for the beta announcement next week.
>>>
>>>For the impatient,  the svn server is always available:
>>>
>>>http://svn.scipy.org/svn/scipy_core/branches/newcore
>>>      
>>>
>> 
>>Hi Travis,
>>
>>when I tried a few months ago to compile one of my C++ Python modules with
>>Numeric3, g++-3.4.3 choked on the line
>>
>>typedef unsigned char bool;
>>
>>in arrayobject.h, because bool is a predefined type in C++.
>>
>>I see the offending line is still in SVN (did not try to build it though).
>>    
>>
>
>Will this do the trick?
>
>#ifndef __cplusplus
>typedef unsigned char bool;
>#define false 0
>#define true 1
>#endif /* __cplusplus */
>
>  
>
>>Sorry for sitting on the bug so long;  the main reason is that at the time
>>(I suppose it is still the case) Numeric3 does not coexist well with
>>Numeric in the same Python interpreter (I remember import conflicts).
>>If a typical Linux user wants to play with Numeric3, he has either to remove
>>Numeric (and break possible dependencies) or build his own Python for Numeric3.
>>I think that most Linux users are not going to do this and that it will take more
>>than a year before distros make the move.  Hence, my lack of motivation for
>>reporting bugs or giving it a real try.
>>    
>>
>
>scipy_core does not interfere with Numeric anymore. It's installed as
>scipy (so it *will* interfere with previous versions of scipy).
>
>While we're on the subject of bugs (for reference, I'm on OS X 10.4 with
>Python 2.4.1):
>
>* When linking umath.so, distutils is including a bare "-l" that causes
>the link to fail (gcc can't interpret the argument). I have no idea
>where it's coming from. Just after the Extension object for umath.so is
>created, the libraries attribute is empty, just like the other Extension
>objects.
>  
>
I've seen this too.  It looks like scipy.distutils is detecting a 
"blank" mathlibs for OS X.

>* When linking against Accelerate.framework, it can't find cblas.h . I
>have a patch in scipy.distutils.system_info for that (and also to remove
>the -framework arguments for compiling; they're solely linker flags).
>
>* setup.py looks for an optimized BLAS through blas_info, but getting
>lapack_info is commented out. Is this deliberate?
>  
>
It was commented out to test the build of the included lapack_lite.   It 
remained commented out while I was trying to build on windows because I 
would get segfaults when trying to link against ATLAS on that platform 
(I didn't track down the problem).

>* Despite comment lines claiming the contrary, scipy.linalg hasn't been
>converted yet. basic_lite.py tries to import lapack and flapack.
>  
>
I've decided against improving the default interfaces for now.  I'm just 
going to give the old Numeric interfaces in scipy_core.  So, this will 
change.  You caught it mid-changes.

>* scipy.base.limits is missing (and is used in basic_lite.py).
>  
>
Should be fine now (again in-the-middle-of changes).

>Feature request:
>
>* Bundle the include directory in with the package itself and provide a
>function somewhere that returns the appropriate directory. People
>writing setup.py scripts for extension modules that use scipy_core can
>then do the following:
>
>    from scipy.distutils import get_scipy_include
>    ...
>    someext = Extension('someext', include_dirs=[get_scipy_include(),
>                                                 ...], ...)
>  
>

Sounds like a good idea.  Not exactly sure how to do this.  Anyone know??

-Travis