[SciPy-dev] requesting feedback on/editing of scikits wiki-page

[David Cournapeau]

Alexander Schmolck wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
>
> As the author of the first (if yet unreleased) scikit, I've tried to put some
> info for prospective scikit authors on
>
>  <http://projects.scipy.org/scipy/scikits/wiki/WikiStart>
>
> that tries to condense down the most important points for those who are not
> yet familiar with the required infrastructure like setuptools (which is fairly
> rich) etc. to make things a little less overwhelming. A few things also still
> need clarification. As I'm myself just learning to get to grips with various
> of these things, so this page could use some attention from someone more
> knowledgable than me.
>
> Here are a few specific points (search for FIXME/XXX in the document)
>
> 0. Blurp: What sort of things are suitable for a scikit project, what
>    requirements must be met by projects or authors to qualify (this should
>    also include something on acceptable/desirable[1] licenses, dependencies,
>    code quality etc.) and what the overall aims and immediate future for
>    scikits look like. I'm not really the person to write that so I just wrote
>    something brief and vague.
>
> 1. Trac: I'm not really that familiar with trac, but I assume some sorts of
>    conventions/infrastructure will need to be established in order for
>    logically independent projects to use the same trac effectively. I guess
>    one first step might be to use ``trac-admin`` to create each scikit (i.e.
>    mlabwrap) as a component? 
>
> 2. Homepage/Wiki/Docstandards etc. info. 
>
>    Hmm, it occurs to me that a link to coding standards might also be a good
>    idea...
>
> 3. Versioning: I think it would be nice if there were a standard way how
>    people version their scikits, both conventions-wise as well as how the
>    process is automated as far as is possible. I've outlined a
>    setuptools-based solution in preference to one using numpy.distutils docs
>    pretty opaque[1].
I found one problem with the approach you mention for versioning: when 
building a source package from sdist, only the release version part is 
appended to the source file, whereas with the "scipy approach", if your 
version is "0.7dev", it is appended to the source package. Also, having 
setuptools handling the versioning means it is more difficult to get the 
exact version back from other programs (things shell scripts and 
Makefile, for example), whereas extracting a string from a python file 
is trivial.

I am not sure to understand the advantages of the approach you are 
proposing ?

David