[Numpy-discussion] Debian/Ubuntu patch help (was: ANN: NumPy 1.6.2 release candidate 1)

Sandro Tosi matrixhasu at gmail.com
Wed May 16 16:41:49 EDT 2012


Hello,

On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 9:01 PM, Ralf Gommers
<ralf.gommers at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 10:35 PM, Julian Taylor
> <jtaylor.debian at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Hi, if there's anyone wants to have a look at the above issue this
>> > week,
>> >that would be great.
>>
>> > If there's a patch by this weekend I can create a second RC, so we can
>> > still have the final release before the end of this month (needed for
>> > Debian freeze). Otherwise a second RC won't be needed.
>>
>> bugfixes are still allowed during the debian freeze, so that should not
>> be an issue for the release timing.
>>
> OK, that's good to know. So what's the hard deadline then?

second half of June, but it's still not set in stone (but I'd also not
expect too much variation)

>> I don't see the issue with the gcc --print-multiarch patch besides maybe
>> some cleanup.
>> --print-multiarch is a debian specific gcc patch, but multiarch is
>> debian specific for now.
>>
>> It doesn't work in 11.04, but who cares, that will be end of life in 5
>> month anyway.
>
>
> Eh, we (the numpy maintainers) should care. If we would not care about an OS
> released only 13 months ago, we're not doing our job right.
>
>>
>> Besides x11 almost nothing is multiarched in 11.04 anyway
>> and that can still be covered by the currently existing method.
>>
>> gcc should be available for pretty much anything requiring
>> numpy.distutils anyway so that should be not be an issue.
>> On systems without --print-multiarch or gcc you just ignore the failing,
>> there will be no repercussions as there will also not be any multiarched
>> libraries.
>>
> If it's really that simple, such a patch may go into numpy master. But
> history has shown that patches to a central part of numpy.distutils are
> rarely issue-free (more due to the limitations/complexity of distutils than
> anything else). Therefore making such a change right before a release is
> simply a bad idea.
>
>> the only potential issue I see is that upstream gcc adds a
>> --print-multiarch that does something completely different and harmful
>> for distutils, but I don't consider that very likely.
>>
>> Hardcoding a bunch of paths defeats the whole purpose of multiarch.
>> It will just to break in future (e.g. when the x32 abi comes to
>> debian/ubuntu) and will make cross compiling harder (though I guess
>> numpy distutils may not be built for that anyway)
>
>
> If that hardcoding will break in the future, then I think for 1.6.2 the
> maintainers of the Debian package should apply the gcc patch to their
> packaged numpy if they think that is necessary.

Agreed, i'll add back the Debian specific patch. Thanks for your time
and analysis - so time to release 1.6.2? :)

Cheers,
-- 
Sandro Tosi (aka morph, morpheus, matrixhasu)
My website: http://matrixhasu.altervista.org/
Me at Debian: http://wiki.debian.org/SandroTosi



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