[AstroPy] External packages in astropy (was: Re: [astropy-dev] ANN: Astropy v0.1)

[Perry Greenfield]

On Jun 20, 2012, at 3:37 AM, Olе Streicher wrote:

> Erik Tollerud <erik.tollerud at gmail.com> writes:
>> On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 11:19 AM, Olе Streicher  
>> <astropy at liska.ath.cx> wrote:
>>> * I very much like the idea of having the external C code in a  
>>> specific
>>>  diretory tree "cextern" since this makes it easier to split this  
>>> part
>>>  and use the versions provided with the OS. I would guess that also
>>>  the "wcslib" part will move from pywcs to cextern?
>
>> Mike D (the maintainer of astropy.wcs and pywcs) will know for sure,
>> but I think his plan is to keep wcslib where it is, because the
>> python-level wrapper is rather closely tied to the particular version
>> of wcslib.
>
> I don't see this tight bound to a specific version. pywcs/astropy.wcs
> uses the official API of wcslib, so it should work with every
> version. And the shared library contains a SONAME that is going to be
> changed if binary compability breaks.
>
That hasn't always been true in the past. Perhaps it is stable enough  
now. Mike is the best judge of that.

Perry