On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 2:18 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan@gmail.com> wrote:
In return, as Paul points out, it becomes substantially easier for people that *aren't* wholly invested in the scientific Python stack to try it out with their regular tools, rather than having to completely change how they work with Python.
This is a really important constituency, actually. And one that has been neglected for a while.
Also consider that, given the status quo, any users that might see that new error instead get even *more* incomprehensible errors as pip attempts to build NumPy from source and fails at doing so.
well, numpy _should_ build out of the box with nothing special if you are set up to build regular extensions. I understand that a lto f Windows users are not set up to build extensions at all, but tehy ar presumably used to getting "compiler not found" errors (or whatever the message is). But you won't get an optimized numpy and much of the rest of the "stack" is harder to build: scipy, matplotlib. So a set of working binary wheels would be great. And while we in the numpy commmunity don't really want a lot of "numpy is slower than MATLAB" FUD out there, I still think it's better to get a sub-optimum, but working build out there. The "should I use python instead of MATLAB?" crowd would be better served by one of the other options anyway... So how rare are non-SSE2 systems? Any w ay to find out? I"m guessing rare enough that we can a) not worry about it, and b) those users will know they have an old system and may expect issue,s particularly with something billed as being for high-performance computation. So I say SSE2 -- but if we do think there ar a lot of non-SSE2 users out there, then do SSE1-only , it would still work just fine for casual use. -Chris -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer Emergency Response Division NOAA/NOS/OR&R (206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception Chris.Barker@noaa.gov