[Numpy-discussion] Proposed Roadmap Overview

[Ralf Gommers]

On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 11:39 PM, Travis Oliphant <travis at continuum.io>wrote:

> Mark Wiebe and I have been discussing off and on (as well as talking with
> Charles) a good way forward to balance two competing desires:
>
>        * addition of new features that are needed in NumPy
>        * improving the code-base generally and moving towards a more
> maintainable NumPy
>
> I know there are load voices for just focusing on the second of these and
> avoiding the first until we have finished that.  I recognize the need to
> improve the code base, but I will also be pushing for improvements to the
> feature-set and user experience in the process.
>
> As a result, I am proposing a rough outline for releases over the next
> year:
>
>        * NumPy 1.7 to come out as soon as the serious bugs can be
> eliminated.  Bryan, Francesc, Mark, and I are able to help triage some of
> those.
>
>        * NumPy 1.8 to come out in July which will have as many
> ABI-compatible feature enhancements as we can add while improving test
> coverage and code cleanup.   I will post to this list more details of what
> we plan to address with it later.    Included for possible inclusion are:
>        * resolving the NA/missing-data issues
>        * finishing group-by
>        * incorporating the start of label arrays
>        * incorporating a meta-object
>        * a few new dtypes (variable-length string, varialbe-length unicode
> and an enum type)
>        * adding ufunc support for flexible dtypes and possibly structured
> arrays
>        * allowing generalized ufuncs to work on more kinds of arrays
> besides just contiguous
>        * improving the ability for NumPy to receive JIT-generated function
> pointers for ufuncs and other calculation opportunities
>        * adding "filters" to Input and Output
>        * simple computed fields for dtypes
>        * accepting a Data-Type specification as a class or JSON file
>        * work towards improving the dtype-addition mechanism
>

For some of these things it's not entirely (or at all, what's a
meta-object?) clear to me what they mean or how they would work. How do you
plan to go about working on these features? One NEP per feature?

Ralf
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