[SciPy-Dev] Renaming scikits.learn

[Mathieu Blondel]

On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 6:28 AM, Gael Varoquaux
<gael.varoquaux at normalesup.org> wrote:

>  a. The scikits/__init__.py file is owned by whichever installs last. As
>    a result a different scikit can screw us by mistake.

That seems unlikely to happen if the scikits agree upon using the same
file for __init__.py (which they seem to do).

>  d. The namespace machinery slows down a lot the imports because it
>    forces the Python imports to do a lot of 'stat' calls. This is the
>    main reason why EPD remove the namespace packages.

Any measurement? That seems negligible compared to, say, loading the
scipy.sparse machinery...

>  b. Rename the package with a prefix common to scikits (sklearn?)

Overall, I didn't feel like the reasons you mention are strong enough
to change anything but if you want to go down that path, I also prefer
b, both for preserving the branding and because "learn" is a too
generic name.

I think there would be a lot to do on the marketing side. Currently
the scikit portal (http://scikits.appspot.com/) seems really poorly
maintained. The website should be maintained with sphinx and include
nice pictures and code examples of each scikit. The quality of the
different scikits seems to be quite heterogeneous. It seems to me that
it's because any project can become a scikit. Since scikits are
somewhat "endorsed" by the scipy community, It would be better if
existing projects applied for being a scikit. Also what about
collaboration between scikits? At least at the documentation level, it
seems like scikits could point to each other.

My 2c,
Mathieu