[SciPy-dev] Dropping djbfft ?

[Pearu Peterson]

On Mon, May 12, 2008 5:59 pm, David Cournapeau wrote:
> Hi,
>
>     I would like to ask again about dropping djbfft support. Djbfft is a
> fft implementation, which has not been updated since 1999, and is not
> packaged by most linux distributions (I quite doubt anyone on windows is
> using it). Also, because it only supports 2^n sizes, it has to be used
> simultaneously with another backend (fftpack, fftw, fftw3, etc....). The
> later is why I would like to drop it: it is quite a PITA to test all
> combinations, and it takes a lot of time for maybe one or two users out
> there. I would much prefer spending times on improving things like our
> fftw3 support, float support, etc...

djbfft is important for applications that need only the 2^n sizes support
and here djbfft have speed advantage over other fft implementations.
For some of these applications the fft speed can be crusial.

Therefore my suggestion is not to drop the djbfft support but rather to
move it from scipy to a standalone package. Then users, who need the fastest
2^n fft, can use it. This makes maintaining scipy.fft as well as djbfft
wrappers easier.

I have been using djbfft backend in scipy without problems. In my
experience, most problems from using djbfft as a fft backend in scipy,
are due to not installing djbfft according to its installation
instructions. Somehow people tend to prefer their conventions but
djbfft happens to be very sensitive to other conventions and then
various problems follow easily.

Regards,
Pearu