[C++-sig] Status of Numpy support in boost python

[Jim Bosch]

On Mon, 2010-03-08 at 08:08 -0500, Stefan Seefeld wrote:
> On 03/08/2010 07:32 AM, Pim Schellart wrote:
> > Hello Everyone,
> >
> > we are working on a project for which it would be extremely useful if
> > numpy arrays could be passed as arguments to wrapped C++ methods.
> > On the website I cannot find any evidence that this is currently
> > supported by Boost Python.
> > Is this (or will this be) implemented?
> >    
> 
> At present, boost.python provides an 'array' type that corresponds to 
> Python's numpy.ndarray.
> However, the wrapper isn't rich enough for example to pass raw data 
> pointers, making it not suitable for some applications.
> 
> Docs for the existing facilities can be found at 
> http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_41_0/libs/python/doc/v2/numeric.html.
> 
> We have had a couple of discussions about improving boost.python's 
> support for numpy, but nothing materialized yet. May be we should rally 
> up enough momentum to get this done.
> 
> 

I have fairly complete library along these lines that I have been slowly
cleaning up for public release, and I could probably submit a fairly
complete proposal over the next few weeks if there is interest.  It's
met my needs quite well over the past few years, but I think it would
benefit from input from the community.

Is there someplace standard for hosting/publishing extensions to
boost.python that I should be aware of?  What I would consider a compute
Numpy interface is probably not something that should be added into the
main boost.python library itself (and I think it would need it's own
shared library if done properly).

Jim Bosch