[Pysparse-users] updated pysparse for numpy

[Daniel W. <dan...@ni...>]

Numeric is dying slowly and being replaced by numpy.
With this in mind, I have updated pysparse to use the new numpy, this  
is all on a branch at the moment.
It was straightforward matter of changing the imported header files  
from Numeric's to numpy's. I am sending this email
to check to see if everybody is happy with the changes that have been  
made. If there are no objections, I can merge back
onto the trunk and maybe make a new release. Changes  and issues are  
as follows:

    - Created a C macro defined from setup.py that either imports  
numpy's or Numeric's headers depending
      on the flag "use_numpy". The C macro was confusing me for  
awhile, but I think it works
      now.

    - I have changed the name space of itsolvers, spmatrix, jdsym etc  
to all lie under pysparse. So, instead of

          >>> import spmatrix

       you do

          >>> from pysparse import spmatrix

        This change stops site-packages from being polluted. At the  
moment the branch version is using pysparse_numpy
        or pysparse_Numeric as the pysparse name space for testing  
purposes.

     - The branch can be checked out via:

             $ cvs -d:ext:ui...@py...:/cvsroot/pysparse  
co -r branch-numpy pysparse

     - I have updated the Examples and Test directories to import  
from pysparse. They all seem to work apart from stuff that was broken  
already.

     - I got rid of pysparse_version.py and replaced it with an  
__init__.py in Lib, which does the imports and holds a __version__  
variable.
       So you can now do:

              >>> import pysparse_numpy
              >>> print pysparse_numpy.__version__
              0.34.032-numpy

     - I think the default flag should be use_numpy=True since most  
users will now be getting numpy rather than Numeric. This could
       be automated with a try and except, which tests for the  
availability of numpy or Numeric. What do you think?

     - You can diff from your working copy of pysparse with "cvs diff  
-c -r branch-numpy" to check the changes.

     - Is it worth bumping the version number of pysparse to 1.0,  
since we will be breaking the name space (interface change)?

     - If you are compiling against numpy, the numpy header files  
don't seem to be going into the right place at least on my two  
computers.
       I haven't resolved this problem yet. For now, I was just  
copying the .h files from .../site-packages/python/numpy/core/ 
include/ to Include/Lib/numpy
       in my working copy of pysparse.

Merry Christmas!

--
Daniel Wheeler