[SciPy-dev] the scipy mission, include finite element solver

[Dag Sverre Seljebotn]

Ondrej Certik wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 2:09 AM, Dag Sverre Seljebotn
> <dagss at student.matnat.uio.no> wrote:
>> Dag Sverre Seljebotn wrote:
>>> David Cournapeau wrote:
>>>> On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 8:37 AM, Andrew Straw <strawman at astraw.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Well, fink ports the Debian package management to Mac OS X. Does
>>>>> something equivalent exist for Windows? The actual Debian file formats
>>>>> are pretty simple, so it seems like it should be do-able.
>>>> What makes debian such a well integrated system is not so much the
>>>> scripts - after all, rpm .spec files, debian files, port (BSd system)
>>>> files are not that different. What matters is how polish the actual
>>>> packages are. That's already difficult to do for one platform. That
>>> +1
>>>
>>> The reason Sage installs works is because Michael Abshoff works as
>>> release manager. Making sure, e.g., that one software package isn't
>>> upgraded until the rest of the packages can handle the upgrade.
>>>
>>> Ondrej, will SPD be keyed to Sage releases? Otherwise SPD will be
>>> something that works at one point in time, but then requires fulltime
>>> supervision to keep it working, and really not much better than
>>> setuptools foir the reasons David mentions.
>> The major point I'm trying to make here is that if you have Sage version
>>  x.y.z, that autoatically implies Python version a.b, NumPy version c.d
>> and SciPy version e.f; all tested by someone else to fit together.
>>
>> Unless the same will be the case for SPD, it just won't work as it must.
>> And if it is not keyed 1:1 to Sage releases, there's going to be much
>> work duplication.
>>
>> The package system is not the problem; distribution maintainance is.
> 
> Yep, that's why I chose Sage, because in my experience Sage is by far
> the most tested and robust opensource source distribution.
> 
> Besides that, both William and Michael are interested in helping me
> out, for example William and Mike Hansen just spent an evening
> disentangling the Sage notebook, so that we can use it in SPD and they
> can use it in the windows port:
> 
> http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/5789
> 
> while in the scipy community, unfortunately, I can still see many
> doubts if this effort is really needed/worthy, etc. So I first need to
> deliver some results, then hopefully more people will join. I can't do
> this myself alone, so I chose Sage.

Well, I'm not really part of the SciPy community, but now that I 
understand the project better I'm very positive. Especially since it 
seems it will bring nice cleanups to the Sage codebase. Good luck with it!

(Myself I will probably just continue to use the gigabyte of disk space 
for a full Sage (what is 1 gig anyway in this day and age?), but I 
understand that others have other needs -- especially Windows support).

-- 
Dag Sverre