A Wednesday 09 April 2008, Stéfan van der Walt escrigué:
On 09/04/2008, Francesc Altet
wrote: Well, I agree that Greg Ewing (the Pyrex creator) has possibly not been very speedy in adding the suggested patches (Greg has his own thoughts on what should be added to Pyrex and what not), which ultimately brought to the need of the Cython fork, but let me stress out that he has always been *very* responsive to the questions on the Pyrex list, and quick enough in fixing real problems in Pyrex. I'm personally very satisfied with Pyrex as does its job extremely well. And I'm specially grateful to Greg for his *huge* contribution to make the job of doing Python extensions a pretty simple job.
So, I don't really think that Pyrex should be considered a "worrying tool" at all (even in the "long run"), rather the contrary, it is a extremely useful tool.
Your first paragraph above served to convince me that this is indeed a worrying tool.
Well, now that I read it better, maybe there is effectively something to worry about the Pyrex future ;) I just wanted to point out that Pyrex is still a good piece of software and much kudos should go to Greg as the originator of the idea.
a) The author is not quick (or willing?) to add patches b) The author wants to decide what goes in and what not (contrary to the community)
Yes, this is my perception from reading the Pyrex list. However, it is important to point out that he has been always fast in fixing real problems (with his own patches or contributed ones).
Pyrex is therefore pretty much in maintenance mode.
Perhaps, although it seems to me that Greg is still planning to enhance and pushing Pyrex forward. And in fact, the Cython guys seems to be commited to maintain compatibility with future Pyrex, which is really nice.
Cython has added some vast improvements; amongs other things
- List comprehension - For i in range (instead of the hacked for i from ...) - Introspection of source into .pyx file
I do agree with you that Pyrex is very useful, but Cython does exactly the same thing, and more, with the additional bonuses that it is being actively developed, and that the SAGE guys like NumPy :)
I'm not saying the contrary, indeed! Cheers, --
0,0< Francesc Altet http://www.carabos.com/ V V Cárabos Coop. V. Enjoy Data "-"