[Numpy-discussion] Binary releases

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 8:15 PM, Peter Cock <p.j.a.cock at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 8:05 PM, Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>> Why not just release numpy 1.8 with the old and terrible system? As
>> you know I'm 110% in favor of getting rid of it, but 1.8 is ready to
>> go and 1.9 is coming soon enough, and the old and terrible system does
>> work right now, today. None of the other options have this property.
>
> On the down side, the "old and terrible system" does not
> cover providing pre-built binaries for 64 bit Windows.
>
> Doing that right is important not just for SciPy but for any
> other downstream package including C code compiled
> against the NumPy C API (and the people doing this
> probably will only have access to free compilers).

That's not a downside -- that's the situation right now and will
continue to be the situation for the immediate future, if we cut a
1.8rc1 tomorrow and also if we don't cut a 1.8rc1 tomorrow. Again, I'm
absolutely behind getting this sorted out, but holding up the release
on all platforms is not going to make win64 standalone binaries appear
any faster, and in the mean time everyone seems to be getting along
OK, either because they're using a distribution, are on another
platform, or taking advantage of Cristoph's generosity (thank you
Cristoph!).

Worst case, if it all gets sorted out next week we could release an
1.8.1 to celebrate...

-n