[SciPy-Dev] ode and odeint callable parameters

[Anne Archibald]

There is periodically discussion of the mess of interfaces and solvers for
ODEs in scipy (see the archives about six months ago, for example). One of
the concerns is that people want to do very different things, so settling
on a good interface is not at all easy. I don't just mean the underlying
algorithms, but also the calling interface. It's easy to support someone
who drops in an RHS and asks for the solution at a hundred predefined
points. It's also clear that a general toolkit shouldn't support my use
case: a 22-dimensional solver with a compiled RHS generated by a symbolic
algebra package, with internal precision switchable between 80 and 128
bits, with a root-finder attached to the output to define stopping places,
that needs to all run with compiled speed. So where along that scale do you
aim scipy's interface? I have my own ideas (see aforementioned archive
thread) but don't have the energy to implement it myself. And anyway, some
people need very different things from their ODE solvers (for example,
solution objects evaluable anywhere).

Anne

On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 12:39 PM Benny Malengier <benny.malengier at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 2016-01-20 12:28 GMT+01:00 Irvin Probst <irvin.probst at ensta-bretagne.fr>:
>
>> On 20/01/2016 12:21, Benny Malengier wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> There never have been many maintainers for the ode functionality. I
>>> looked at what would be needed to add odes into scipy, but the recent work
>>> on ode in scipy is not trivial to move (like the complex_ode method). The
>>> work is too large for me to consider, the API of ode too different from ode
>>> in odes scikit. So you would end up with odeint (for those wanting that
>>> interface with LSODA), ode (for those wanting a VODE/ZVODE/DOPRI/RK method
>>> ... approach with the added features), and odes (for those wanting the
>>> modern features in sundials (roots, sensitivity, Krylov)). That seems
>>> worse. In the end I have a feeling most advanced users with stiff problems
>>> just use one of the python interfaces to sundials, be it via octave,
>>> assimulo, or odes scikit.
>>>
>>
>> Is that the kind of task for a Google SoC student ?
>>
>>
> It was on the list of SoC to work on the ode part 2 years ago. Not last
> year. If there are mentors in the current contributors to scipy, it can be
> on it again I assume.
>
> Benny
>
>>
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