On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 08:36:39 -0700 Chris Barker <chris.barker@noaa.gov> wrote:
- Packages with non-standard non-python dependencies: libhdf5, lapack, BLAS, fortran(!) -- this is where the nightmare really is. I suspect most folks on this list will say that this is "Scipy Problem", and indeed, that's where the biggest issues are, and where systems like conda have grown up to address this.
But at this point, I think it's really sad that the community has become fractured -- if folks start out with "I want to do scientific computing", then they get pointed to Enthought Canopy or Anaconda, and all is well (until they look for standard web development packages -- though that's getting better). But if someone starts out as a web developer, and is all happy with the PyPA stack (virtualenv, pip, etc...), then someone suggests they put some Bokeh plotting in their web site, or need to do some analytics on HDF5 files, or any number of things well supported by Python, but NOT by pip/wheel -- they are kind of stuck.
Indeed, that's the main issue here. Eventually some people will want to use llvmlite or Numba in an environment where there's also a web application serving stuff, or who knows other combinations.
PS: Personally, after banging my head against this for years, I've committed to conda for the moment -- working to get conda to better support the wide range of python packages. I haven't tried it on Linux, but it does exist and works well for some folks.
Due to the fact Linux binary wheels don't exist, conda is even more useful on Linux... Regards Antoine.