[pypy-dev] Questions on the pypy+numpy project

[Ian Ozsvald]

Hi all. Hi Fijal, you tweeted in response to my
https://twitter.com/#!/ianozsvald/status/124898441087299584 the other
day.

I met Travis Oliphant on Friday at the Enthought Cambridge office
opening. Didrik Pinte and I mentioned that we'd offered £600 each
towards pypy+numpy integration. Travis had a few thoughts on the
matter and this has left me in the position of not being sure of the
full costs and benefits of the pypy+numpy project.

The main position (held by Travis and several others - and 'this is as
best as I remember it and I'm open to correction') was that porting
just numpy could leave much of the scipy ecosystem separated from pypy
as the numpy port wouldn't have the same (and maybe I'm getting
details mixed up here) API so couldn't be compiled easily.

I've bcc'd Travis and Didrik, maybe someone else can come and clear
the position (and correct my inevitable errors). I use numpy and parts
of scipy and haven't looked into pypy's specifics so I'm far too
ignorant on the whole subject.

I'd like to pose some questions:
* how big is the scipy ecosystem beyond numpy? What's the rough line
count for Python, C, Fortran etc that depends on numpy?
* can these other libraries *easily* be compiled against a pypy+numpy
port (and if not, why not?)
* are there other routes for numpy work (e.g. refactoring the core
numpy libs and separating the C-dependent interface away, opening the
door to a side-by-side pypy interface) that might benefit both the
CPython and pypy communities?

I apologise for the above being rather vague, I'm hoping some of you
can help clarify the pros and cons of whatever options are available.

Cheers,
Ian.

-- 
Ian Ozsvald (A.I. researcher)
ian at IanOzsvald.com

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