[SciPy-dev] build system for scikit

[Nathaniel Smith]

So I've had some reports of problems with the scikits.sparse build
system; I'm sure the general thrust will be familiar to many people
here:
 -- Even on Linux, different distributions put the CHOLMOD headers in
different places (argh wft people)
 -- Apparently numpy headers are not always placed in the Python
include path? This seems broken to me, but okay...
 -- In principle, it might be nice to be able to build just some of
the scikit, e.g. if the person has the right libraries installed for
scikits.sparse.cholmod but not scikits.sparse.umfpack.

I know that Python building is completely broken in many ways, but
there must be some kind of standard solutions (or at least standard
hacks!) for these. I did check numpy.distutils, but the docs I can
find are all about how to piece together a build for a giant project
with many pieces, which is not very relevant, and I couldn't figure
out how to use it and Cython together (they both want to replace
build_ext).

Help!

-- Nathaniel