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

[Darren Dale]

On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 10:16 PM, Travis Oliphant <oliphant at enthought.com> wrote:
> I will just work on trunk and assume that the next release will be ABI
> incompatible.   At this point I would rather call the next version 1.5
> than 2.0, though.  When the date-time work is completed, then we could
> release an ABI-compatible-with-1.5  version 2.0.

There may be repercussions if numpy starts deviating from its own
conventions for what versions may introduce ABI incompatibilities.

I attended a workshop recently where a number of scientists approached
me and expressed interest in switching from IDL to python. Two of
these were senior scientists leading large research groups and
collaborations, both of whom had looked at python several years ago
and decided they did not like "the wild west nature" (direct quote) of
the scientific python community. I assured them that both the projects
and community were maturing. At the time, I did not have to explain
the situation concerning numpy-1.4.0, which, if it causes problems
when they try to set up an environment to assess python, could put
them off python for another 3 years, maybe even for good. It would be
a lot easier to justify the disruption if one could say "numpy-2.0
added support for some important features, so this disruption was
unfortunate but necessary. Such disruptions are specified by major
version changes, which as you can see are rare. In fact, there are no
further major version changes envisioned at this time." That kind of
statement might reassure a lot of people, including package
maintainers etc.

Regards,
Darren

P.S. I promise this will be my last post on the subject.