[Numpy-discussion] F2PY future

[Fernando Perez]

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 9:48 AM, Andrew Straw <strawman at astraw.com> wrote:
> Pearu Peterson wrote:
>  > Use Google Code. Pros: it provides necessary infrastructure to develop
>  > software projects and I am used to it. Cons: in my experience Google
>  > Code has been too many times broken (at least three times in half a
>  > year), though this may improve in future. Also, Google Code provides
>  > only SVN, no hg.
>  >
>  Another option: the IPython people have been using launchpad.net (
>  https://launchpad.net/ipython ) -- it supports bzr. I'm not sure how
>  happy they are with it, but I think happy enough to stick with it rather
>  than attempt to get a server with hg set up. IIRC, they did initially
>  marginally prefer hg over bzr but the immediate availability of bzr
>  hosting swung them over.

Pretty happy, for the most part.  The launchpad site is a bit messy to
navigate, some things aren't totally obvious (which should be) and
we've all made a few mistakes with the transition to a bzr workflow,
but we'll likely stick to it.  Over the next couple of weeks, in
between grant deadlines, I hope to push the process of moving 'for
real' our code hosting over to lp, which will require doing a real
import of the SVN history and something with our Trac bugs.

It's important to note that we are NOT abandoning ipython.scipy.org:
we'll keep the Moin site, mailing lists, etc as it is.  But unless
something weird comes up in a final "let's do this" discussion with
ipython-dev, I think the decision to make a permanent transition is
more or less done.  I just don't see anything better out there that
exists *right now*.

>From a technical perspective I think the hg/bzr discussion is nearly a
toss-up, and I'm not interested in spending weeks on the fine points
that may lie there.  Bzr does the job, more than well enough for us.
The real kicker was the vast amount of infrastructure provided by
launchpad, as you point out above.  While it's not perfect, it does a
lot of very good things, and it's widely used by many more projects,
thus likely to continue improving.

As a note, we've also just switched neuroimaging.scipy.org to
launchpad (again, just the code hosting part):

https://launchpad.net/nipy

If others here are interested, I can give more details on the benefits
we've already reaped from the launchpad transition on both ipython and
nipy.

Regards,

f