[SciPy-dev] Cython and large generated .c files

[David Cournapeau]

Lisandro Dalcin wrote:
> I have some naive code implementing automatic download of a zip file
> checkout from the Cython repos. After a few fixes some time ago,
> Cython can happily run with zipimport (there is a nasty warning that
> could be worked for removal), so the build-time dependency could be
> somewhat alleviated, the scipy buildsystem could just try to
> automatically download a zip file in case of a missing/outdated Cython
> installation.
>   

Please, no. Building should not involve any internet connection. This
can fail in so many ways, we will get many reports of people with weird
network policies and so on. And OS packagers will hate us even more.

Cython becomes a build dependency, it should be checked and handled as
such. I will add numpy.distutils support  to make this transparent
(unless someone beats me to it).

cheers,

David