[Numpy-discussion] Proposal to accept NEP-18, __array_function__ protocol

[Hameer Abbasi]

> On 29. Aug 2018, at 11:44, Matti Picus <matti.picus at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 29/08/18 10:37, Nathaniel Smith wrote:
>> it's easy to imagine scenarios where the
>> people being broken aren't the ones who had a chance to read the docs
>> – e.g. if a major package starts relying on __array_function__, then
>> it's all*their*  users who we'd be breaking, even though they had
>> nothing to do with it.
> This is a packaging problem. This proposal is intended for use by other "major packages", not so much for end-users. We would have much more trouble if we were proposing a broad change to something like indexing or the random number module (see those NEPs). If we break one of those major packages, it is on them to pin the version of NumPy they can work with. In my opinion very few end users will be implementing their own ndarray classes with `__array_function__`. While we will get issue reports, we can handle them much as we do the MKL or OpenBLAS ones - pinpoint the problem and urge users to complain to those packages.

One thing that might help here is nightly or continuous CI builds of the NumPy wheels. This would be good, as we could test it in CI, and fix it when it comes up. But I guess that’s another discussion.

Personally, for as long as this protocol is experimental, I’ll add a warning in the docs of sparse as well; saying this might disappear anytime.

> 
> Other than adding a warning, I am not sure what the concrete proposal is here. To not accept the NEP?
> Matti
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