[Numpy-discussion] Removing datetime support for 1.4.x series ?

[Francesc Alted]

A Thursday 04 February 2010 08:46:01 Charles R Harris escrigué:
> > Perhaps one way to articulate my perspective is the following:
> >
> > There are currently 2 groups of NumPy users:
> >
> >  1)  those who have re-compiled all of their code for 1.4.0
> >  2)  those who haven't
> 
> I think David has a better grip on that. There really are a lot of people
> who depend on binaries, and those binaries in turn depend on numpy. I would
> even say those folks are a majority, they are those who download the Mac
>  and Windows versions of numpy.

Yes, I think this is precisely the problem: people that are used to fetch 
binaries and want to use new NumPy, will be forced to upgrade all the other 
binary packages that depends on it.  And these binary packagers (including me) 
are being forced to regenerate their binaries as soon as possible if they 
don't want their users to despair.  I'm not saying that regenerating binaries 
is not possible, but that would require a minimum of anticipation.  I'd be 
more comfortable with ABI-breaking releases to be announced at least with 6 
months of anticipation.

Then, a user is not likely going to change its *already* working environment 
until all the binary packages he depends on (scipy, matplotlib, pytables, 
h5py, numexpr, sympy...) have been *all* updated for dealing with the new ABI 
numpy, and that could be really a long time.  With this (and ironically), an 
attempt to quickly introduce a new feature (in this case datetime, but it 
could have been whatever) in a release for allowing wider testing and 
adoption, will almost certainly result in a release that takes much longer to 
spread widely, and what is worst, generating a large frustration among users. 

My 2 cts,

-- 
Francesc Alted