On Wed, 2005-08-17 at 14:31 -0600, Travis Oliphant wrote:
scipy_core + available instructions could provide all the infrastructure someone needs to contribute packages to scipy. This would also allow people to develop (and maintain) their own modules (which they seem to like to do anyway). If we could just get them to play nice with the rest of scipy_core, it would all be for benefit.
I think the user's perspective is: what we really need is a preconfigured package manager. From this I conclude that any restructuring will benefit by enabling easy access with a package manager such as PackMan or pypan. http://www.python.org/packman/ http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/pypan/ A user's perspective: as long as - installation is simple, and - the core of what I need is one install that is easy to update then I'll be happy. SciPy has largely met that demand for me, except that I had to flail about to learn how to best approach simple data driven graphics. Message from *that* experience: make smart choices for the new user! Do NOT just give me a bunch of options when I am starting out, as I will lack the information to choose among them. That may suggest a fairly large SciPy, since lots of initial choices should be made for the new users. (Of course it should also be easy to deviate from these if desired.) Question for the longer term: what structure will make it as easy as possible for people with very focused interests to add modules and submit patches that will be rapidly incorprated in SciPy? Surely some of the recent open source research literature must offer some help here? (But I do not know what it is.) I suspect the answer is: it must be possible for a person in charge of one module/package not to worry about what is happening with other modules/packages. Is this affected by the proposal? fwiw, Alan Isaac