[Numpy-discussion] arrayobject.h (and friends) install location

[pearu at cens.ioc.ee]

On Mon, 16 Jan 2006, Arnd Baecker wrote:

> On Mon, 16 Jan 2006, David M. Cooke wrote:
> 
> > On Jan 15, 2006, at 14:23 , Zachary Pincus wrote:
> >
> > >>> Or is this a policy change which puts the headers in the site-
> > >>> packages directory?
> > >>
> > >> This is not an error. Use numpy.get_numpy_include() to retrive the
> > >> directory of numpy header files. See numpy.get_numpy_include.__doc__
> > >> for more information.
> > >
> > > Thanks for the information. Unfortunately, the package I'm working
> > > on can't be built with distutils,
> 
> It seems that distutils is not loved that much
> (E.g. Wax no longer uses distutils
> http://zephyrfalcon.org/weblog2/arch_e10_00870.html#e878 )

What Wax does, works well with pure Python packages, so I guess Wax is a
pure Python package. As soon as it would need extension modules, one
should need to use distutils or some other extension building utility.

> > > Understanding that the optimal, preferred method of finding the
> > > include dir will always be numpy.get_numpy_include(), if I must
> > > resort to a suboptimal method of guessing likely locations, what
> > > will those locations be?
> > >
> > > Are they generally within the site-packages directory? Sometimes in
> > > the python include directory? Will they be ever-changing?
> >
> > For now, they're in the site-packages directory, under numpy/core/
> > include. That position might change (it used to be numpy/base/
> > include, for instance), if we rename modules again. They probably
> > won't migrate to the python include directory for the reason they're
> > not in there now (non-root users can't install there).

The location of numpy header files will not change in future, at least I
don't see any reason for doing so..
 
> If I do a `python setup.py --prefix=$HOME/my_numpy install`,
> this leads to
> 
>   ~/my_numpy/bin/f2py
>   ~/my_numpy/lib/python2.3/site-packages/numpy/*
> 
> Wouldn't then a
>   ~/my_numpy/include/numpy/*
> be reasonable?
>
> Presumably I am overlooking something, and I know that this
> has been discussed in much detail before, but still ...

Yes, this has been discussed before and the discussion is in scipy-dev
archives somewhere.. The location of numpy header files is well-documented
(we have numpy/doc/CAPI.txt and numpy.get_numpy_include()), so I don't
understand what is the problem with the current situation.

Pearu