[Numpy-discussion] Any plans for windows 64-bit installer for 1.7?

[Ondřej Čertík]

On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 9:20 PM, Dag Sverre Seljebotn
<d.s.seljebotn at astro.uio.no> wrote:
> On 02/07/2013 12:16 AM, Matthew Brett wrote:
[...]
>> Can you clarify the people you think will get stuck?  I think I'm
>> right in saying that anyone with a C extension should be able to build
>> them against numpy, by installing the free (as-in-beer) MS tools?  So
>> do you just mean people needing a Fortran compiler?  That's a small
>> constituency, I think.
>
> Off the top of my head there's SciPy and pymc...
>
> Anyway, I'm butting in because I wish this discussion could separate
> between the user perspective and the developer perspective.
>
> FWIW,
>
> 1) From a user's perspective, I don't understand this either. If you are
> already using a closed source, not-free-as-in-beer operating system, why
> would you not use (or buy!) a closed source, not-free-as-in-beer Fortran
> compiler?

Indeed. Though I really have no clue on the Windows use cases. Maybe
most Windows users don't want to compile anything, just
use numpy and scipy from Python?

>
> 2) BUT, the argument I've seen that I can at least understand is that
> the release manager should be able to do a release using only open
> source tools (even using Wine instead of Windows) and not rely on a
> limited number of licenses. And that the release manager must be able to
> perform all the official builds directly.

As the release manager, I really only have two requirements:

* I want to ssh in there from my Ubuntu
* I want to automate the whole process

For Mac, linux and Wine I can do that. So I have just spend few hours
browsing the net and it looks like that the combination of Windows
PowerShell 2.0:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShell

and some SSH server, there are quite a few, one commercial but free
for one user one connection (perfect for me!):

http://www.powershellinside.com/powershell/ssh/

So if I understand the pages correctly, I can login there from linux,
and then I use the PowerShell commands to script anything. It looks
like I can even use my Fabric fabfiles with powershell:

https://gist.github.com/diyan/2850866

I can also use git with PowerShell:

http://windows.github.com/
http://haacked.com/archive/2011/12/13/better-git-with-powershell.aspx


So the final problem is how to execute MSVC and Fortran from Power
Shell on Windows. These links might help for MSVC:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4398136/use-powershell-for-visual-studio-command-prompt
http://geekswithblogs.net/dwdii/archive/2011/05/20/automating-a-visual-studio-build-with-powershell---part-1.aspx

Finally, for Intel Fortran + powershell:

http://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/topic/284425


So I think it is all possible. If somebody can provide a machine with
Windows, MSVC, PowerShell2.0, SSH server and some Fortran compiler, it
should be possible for me to automate everything from Ubuntu using my
Fabric files (https://github.com/certik/numpy-vendor).

Ondrej