[Numpy-discussion] Generalized ufuncs?

[David Cournapeau]

On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 1:16 AM, Travis E. Oliphant
<oliphant at enthought.com> wrote:
>
> The biggest reason is that the patch requires changing the C-API and we
> are already doing that for 1.2.   I would rather not do it again for
> another 6 months at least.  I don't think we should make the patch wait
> that long.

I understand the concern, but that should have been discussed I think.
Changing C code affects most process wrt releases, not just people
concerned with API stability. From my POV, recent C code caused me a
lot of trouble wrt binaries building. If we keep changing C code
during the beta, I won't be able to follow.

The problem I see with any C (not necessarily C API) change is that
they can break a lot of things. For example, I did not notice, but
several generated code (umath stuff, mtrand) break Visual Studio
compilation because of too long strings. If we accept changes in the C
code during the beta phase, it just does not mean much to have beta.

The point to have a time-based release is to enforce this kind of
things; if we don't, then not only time-based release do not make
sense, but they make those problem even worse (no benefit, and we rush
things out which do not work).

I see a lot of bugs in scipy/numpy, matplotlib problems in the last
few days report on the ML and trac. Putting non bug fix-related C code
will make this an ever-ending battle.

cheers,

David