[Numpy-discussion] NA masks in the next numpy release?

[Matthew Brett]

Hi,

On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 11:21 AM, Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I was surprised today to notice that Mark's NA mask support appears to
> have been merged into numpy master and is described in the draft
> release notes[1]. My surprise is because merging it to mainline
> without any discussion on the list seems to contradict what what
> Travis wrote in July, that it was being developed as an experiment and
> explicitly *not* intended to be merged without further discussion:
>
> "Basically, because there is not consensus and in fact a strong and
> reasonable opposition to specific points, Mark's NEP as proposed
> cannot be accepted in its entirety right now. However,  I believe an
> implementation of his NEP is useful and will be instructive in
> resolving the issues and so I have instructed him to spend Enthought
> time on the implementation. Any changes that need to be made to the
> API before it is accepted into a released form of NumPy can still be
> made even after most of the implementation is completed as far as I
> understand it."[2]
>
> Can anyone explain what the plan is here? Is the idea to continue the
> discussion and rework the API while it is in master, delaying the next
> release for as long as it takes to achieve consensus? Or is there some
> mysterious git thing going on where "master" is actually an
> experimental branch and the real mainline development is happening
> somewhere else? Or something else I'm not thinking of? Please help me
> understand.

I don't know about you, but watching the development from a distance
it became increasingly clear to me that this would happen.  I"m sure
you've had the experience as I have, of mixing several desirable
changes into the same set of commits, and it's hard work to avoid
this.  I imagine this is what happened with Mark's MA changes.

The result is actually an extension of the problems of the original
discussion, which is a feeling that we the community do not have a say
in the development.

I think this email might be a plea to the numpy steering group, and to
Travis in particular, to see if we can use a discussion of this series
of events to decide on a good way to proceed in future.

See you,

Matthew