[SciPy-dev] scipy.sparse + umfpack + system_info

[Robert Cimrman]

Ed Schofield wrote:
> Robert Cimrman wrote:
> 
>>Hi all,
>>I have added a basic umfpack detection support to
>>numpy.distutils.system_info() - see example site.cfg below (and
>>replace <UMFPACKv4.4_root>...).
>>The Umfpack wrapper still resides in the sandbox, but its setup.py now
>>uses the detection stuff.
>>
>>Now I would like to move the wrapper somewhere under scipy.sparse and
>>I hit a problem: umpfack.py depends on scipy.sparse, since it uses the
>>CSR/CSC matrix formats, but also scipy.sparse uses umfpack.py for
>>solving linear equations.if present. How to get out of this circular
>>dependency problem? Do you have any suggestions on how to organize the
>>files?
> 
> Hi Robert,
> 
> Great work! :)
> 
> I suggest we move the solvers out of sparse.py, leaving only the data
> types.  We could put them instead into a separate module that depends on
> both sparse.py and umfpack.py.  We can still have them accessible under
> the scipy.sparse namespace by adding a line like
>     from umfsolvers import *
> to sparse/__init__.py.

Yes, ideally I would like to see having a direct solver module and an 
iterative solver module, each working with both the dense and the sparse 
matrices. But for the moment we could just move solve() and lu_factor() 
somewhere else (linsolve package?). I am bad at coming with names :-)

r.