Re: [Pdl-devel] Whither PDL?

[Ed . <ej...@ho...>]

Hi Luis,

Good to hear there's at least one list participant, and at least one user 
:-)

PDLA - the "A" stands for "Agile". The concept was to unwedge the 
development of PDL, by moving it to a place where the core was separated 
from the many, many awesome extras that have become part of the distro. The 
problem with the large distro was that any part of it not working was a 
blocker to further release. PDLA is a fork of PDL (approximately) 2.013 
currently, with PDLA::Core as a separate distro, on which PDLA depends. Then 
further parts of PDLA can be split into separate CPAN distros, all depending 
on PDLA::Core (and anything else they need to).

The updating process won't be hard, since I mostly automated the bringing 
across of each patch from PDL. I'll do one release for each PDL main-release 
(which is only 6), then make further "sub" releases with further splits. The 
benefit is a quicker release process, quicker installation, and less risk 
for each release. I don't mean to put words in CHM's mouth, but the last 
thing I recall him saying on this list, on this subject, was a hope that I 
would continue this process. I hope I got that right (and he can speak up!), 
and I hope that's still true.

If you don't mind using the equivalent of 2.013, rather than 2.019, you can 
install full PDLA with just "cpanm PDLA", or just the core with "cpanm 
PDLA::Core". Then change any of your code to use "PDLA" instead of "PDL", 
and it should "just work".

My version-numbering scheme deliberately adds a further 3 digits to the 3 
used by PDL, allowing me to iterate very rapidly, while still being visible 
what we're tracking. The intent further will be to increase, not decrease, 
the reproducibility of PDL* scientific results, because it will be 
super-easy (and I will document all these points) to get people to use known 
versions of things. Your scientific paper could have a little "PDLA 
installation" paragraph which might say:

perlbrew install perl-5.26.1
perlbrew use perl-5.26.1
perlbrew lib create experiment-6 # you can make other local-libs, with 
different versions of eg PDL
perlbrew use perl-5.26.1@experiment-6
cpanm PDLA::Core@2.013000 PDLA::Some::Other@1.002 # very specific version of 
PDLA, to *guarantee* reproducibility
wget 
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/myusername/experiment-6/master/processing.pl 
# made-up but correct URL format
wget 
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/myusername/experiment-6/master/dataset # 
made-up but correct URL format
./processing.pl dataset
# etc

You will see that almost all of this is also applicable to PDL. People have 
made these fantastic tools, which genuinely solve the previously terrible 
problems of reproducibility. There is of course the remaining problem of PDL 
config such as BADVALUE.

On that point, someone (probably me) needs to change PDLA to have things 
like BADVALUE etc from an install-time choice, to a runtime choice. That way 
the same "processing.pl", which specified BADVALUE itself, would run the 
same on the same data and same version of PDLA. That would be a change from 
PDL, though the defaults would be the same as out-of-the-box PDL, so a 
better description might be just "added feature".

This really won't take much work to do, and I would love to see this bit of 
unfinished business get tidied up. I just want to be sure people will 
actually use it :-)

Best regards,
Ed

-----Original Message----- 
From: Luis Mochan
Sent: Friday, April 12, 2019 2:23 PM
To: pdl...@li...
Subject: Re: [Pdl-devel] Whither PDL?

Hi Ed,

On Fri, Apr 12, 2019 at 12:29:07AM +0000, Ed . wrote:
> Dear PDL Developers,
>
> It’s been nearly a year since the last release of PDL. Currently the 
> PDL::Lite module does not do what is its entire point, which is to export 
> a small set of functions that are supposed to work. The PR to fix this 
> (https://github.com/PDLPorters/pdl/pull/260) has not been commented on, 
> nor has it been merged and instantly dev- then proper-released.
>
> Do people still use PDL?

I do, for an important part of my daily work. So I hope for it to have
a long healthy life.

> Is it time for me to bring the “PDLA” code and idea up to date with
the current “real” PDL, and release it?

I would like to learn more about PDLA, its similarities and
differences to the current PDL, its implementation, its maturity, and
its compatibilities/incompatibilities for current code. I haven't
tried it yet, but I'll do asap.

> If I do, are we happy to start submitting patches etc to PDLA instead of 
> PDL, and leave PDL in a static, known state?



-- 

                                                                  o
W. Luis Mochán,                      | tel:(52)(777)329-1734     /<(*)
Instituto de Ciencias Físicas, UNAM  | fax:(52)(777)317-5388     `>/   /\
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