Hi, On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 1:36 PM, Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 8:46 PM, Matthew Brett <matthew.brett@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 10:48 AM, Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 1:32 AM, Matthew Brett <matthew.brett@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 3:04 PM, Christoph Gohlke <cgohlke@uci.edu> wrote:
On 2/5/2013 10:51 AM, Matthew Brett wrote:
Hi,
On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 5:09 PM, Matthew Brett <matthew.brett@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 3:46 PM, Charles R Harris > <charlesr.harris@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> >> On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 4:04 PM, Robert Kern >> <robert.kern@gmail.com> >> wrote: >>> >>> On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 10:38 PM, Matthew Brett >>> <matthew.brett@gmail.com> >>> wrote: >>>> Hi, >>>> >>>> On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 1:15 PM, Ralf Gommers >>>> <ralf.gommers@gmail.com> >>>> wrote: >>> >>>>> MSVC + Intel Fortran + MKL, yes. But those aren't free. So how >>>>> can >>>>> you >>>>> provide an Amazon image for those? >>>> >>>> You can make an image that is not public, I guess. I suppose >>>> anyone >>>> who uses the image would have to have their own licenses for the >>>> Intel >>>> stuff? Does anyone have experience of this? >>> >>> You need to purchase one license per developer: >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-math-kernel-library-licensing... >>> >> >> I think 64 bits on windows is best pushed off to 1.7.1 or 1.8. It >> would be a >> bit much to get it implemented in the next week or two. > > The problem with not providing these binaries is that they are at > the > bottom of everyone's stack, so a delay in numpy holds everyone > back. > > I can't find completely convincing stats, but it looks as though 64 > bit windows 7 is now the most common version of Windows, at least > for > Gamers [1] around now, and it was getting that way for everyone in > 2010 [2]. > > It don't think it reflects well on on us that we don't appear to > support 64 bits out of the box; just for example, R already has a > 32 > bit / 64 bit installer. > > If I understand correctly, the options for doing this right now > are: > > 1) Minimal cost in time : ask Christophe nicely whether we can > distribute his binaries via the Numpy page > 2) Small cost in time / money : pay for licenses for Ondrej or me > or > someone to install the dependencies on my Berkeley machine / an > Amazon > image.
In order not to leave this discussion without a resolution:
Christophe - would you allow us to distribute your numpy binaries for 1.7 from the numpy sourceforge page?
Cheers,
Matthew
I am OK with providing 64 bit "numpy-MKL" binaries (that is numpy compiled with MSVC compilers and linked to Intel's MKL) for official numpy releases.
Thank you - that is great.
However:
1) There seems to be no real consensus and urge for doing this.
I certainly feel the urge and feel it strongly. As a packager for two or three projects myself, it's a royal pain having to tell someone to go to two different places for binaries depending on the number of bits of their Windows.
If you're relying on .exe installers on SF, then you have to send your users to more places than that probably. Really the separate installers are a poor alternative to the available scientific distributions. And the more packages you need as a user, the more annoying these separate installers are.
I think Chuck was worried about the time it would take to do it, and I think you've already solved this problem. Ralf was worried about Scipy - see below.
Not just Scipy - that would be my worry number one, but the same holds for all packages based on Numpy. You double the number of Windows installers that every single project needs to provide.
Using a free toolchain capable of building the whole scipy-stack would be much preferred.
That's true, but there seems general agreement this is not practical in the very near future.
Several 64 bit Python distributions containing numpy-MKL are already available, some for free.
You mean EPD and AnacondaCE? I don't think we should withhold easily available vanilla builds because they are also available in company-sponsored projects. Python.org provides windows builds even though ActiveState is free-as-in-beer.
If the company-sponsored bit bothers you, there's also a 64-bit Python(x,y) now.
I'm sure you've seen that the question 'where are the 64-bit installers' comes up often for Numpy.
It seems to me that we'd have to have a good reason not provide them. There will always be some number of people like me who like to install the various parts by hand, and don't like using large packages, free or or open or not. For example, I don't use macports. At the moment, the reasons I see you are giving are:
1) Then everyone would have to provide 64-bit binaries
Indeed. And since many packages won't do that because there's no free compilers, users just get stuck a bit later in the "installing the stack" process. I'm sure providing the binaries will help some people, but I expect it to cause as many problems as it solves.
Can you clarify the people you think will get stuck? I think I'm right in saying that anyone with a C extension should be able to build them against numpy, by installing the free (as-in-beer) MS tools? So do you just mean people needing a Fortran compiler? That's a small constituency, I think. It seems to me against the give-it-a-go spirit of open source to say 'sure we can build installers, but you might get stuck later on so we won't give them to you'. And, if we start providing installers, I suspect we'll find that people start solving the remaining issues much more quickly than would happen if we don't provide them. Cheers, Matthew