[Numpy-discussion] Thoughts on making it easier for numarray users to transition to scipy_core

[Travis Oliphant]

A few days ago I played with nd_image and was able to make it compile 
for scipy_core.  In the process, I had some ideas for making the 
transition to scipy_core easier for numarray users:

1) It would be nice if there was someway to document on the Python level 
any needed changes.  In the process, we might find things that need to 
be added to scipy_core.  I would like to have some kind of program for 
automatically making most of those needed changes before a 1.0 release 
of scipy_core.

2) On the C-API side, my experience with nd_image showed me that quite a 
few of the numarray C-API calls can be written as macros while some will 
need to be additional functions.  I think we could easily write a 
numcompatmodule.c and associated numcompat.h file so that users needing 
the numarray C-API could include the numcompat.h file and then the 
import_libnumarray() command would load the numcompatmodule.c with it's 
compatibility functions.

In this way, the transition for C-API users could be as easy as changing 
the include file to numcompat.h? 

-Travis