Hi, On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 7:16 PM, Aaron Meurer <[email protected]> wrote: <snip> >> Have the authors of conda gone on the distutils mailing lists to >> advocate conda as a solution to the distutils problem? > > A lot of conda is built around the frustration of the bad design > decisions of distutils plus the inability for the community to really > understand the needs of the scientific community, so conda works more > or less around distutils (the build stage works on top of distutils, > if you want, but the install stage works independent of it). > > To answer your question, I'm not sure what direct advocation has been > done, but the core packaging guys are definitely aware of conda.
Yes, that was my impression. >>> In fact, a lot of people are starting to use conda (either using >>> Anaconda or separate from it), because it really solves these problems >>> (this includes people at Berkeley). >> >> I may not be talking to those people for some reason :) >> >>> The great thing about Anaconda (the distribution) is that it comes >>> with things that really enhance the SymPy experience, like the IPython >>> notebook, matplotlib, the IPython qtconsole (which is a serious pain >>> to install from source even on Mac OS X), numpy, scipy, and so on. We >>> have to remember with SymPy that we are part of the SciPy stack >>> (http://www.scipy.org/about.html). >> >> Yes, I teach using a lot of that stack, so I too need all the >> dependencies installed. We agree that Anaconda is convenient, but >> may be we disagree about the potential risks to the ecosystem. >> >>>> >>>> I'm not suggesting that we deprecate the large installers, but only we >>>> be careful to make sure that other options exist. >>>> >>>> I'm happy to do the extra work over the hour needed for sympy release, >>>> to generate the windows installers, and test them. >>> >>> The issue is that I really want it to be possible to make the entire >>> release by myself, whenever I want to. Far be it from me to turn away >>> help, but the kind of help that actually isn't helpful is to say, >>> "sure, I can help you do that whenever you do a release. Just ping >>> me". >> >> Well - you plan to do the release without the windows installers. So, >> why not - do the release without the windows installers - and then >> >> a ) ping me to upload the windows installers OR >> b) let me set up an automated system to build the installers on our >> buildbots and you can upload those after triggering the build on the >> web and downloading the built installers to your machine. >> >> There's no need for the windows installers to arrive at the same time >> as the source installers is there? Why not leave the binary >> installers as pleasant extras on pypi to be uploaded when ready. >> That's what the matplotlib guys have done for the last release, for >> example (for OSX). >> >>> And it isn't you personally. I don't want the release to become >>> dependent on *any* one person, myself included. That's why I worked so >>> hard to make the whole release process automated, so that it can be >>> reproduced by anyone (with the caveat that I'll need to give you >>> access to PyPI if you want to do it, but I'll do that for any core >>> developer who volunteers to do a release). >> >> As you can give access to pypi, I can give access the buildbot >> machinery, or set up the machinery to do the work automatically. The >> buildbot stuff is all on github, so it would not be very hard to set >> up your own buildbot farm if you don't want to use ours. I agree >> completely that it's good to automate the process and make it easy to >> pass on - we had the same idea when setting up the buildbots. > > I suppose if you want to set that up we can support it. Are these > buildbots capable of testing the installers so that we can be sure > that they work? Yes - they build the installer and then install it into a virtualenv and run the tests before uploading to a public web directory. Here's one example: http://nipy.bic.berkeley.edu/builders/nibabel-bdist32-32/builds/49 It sounds like a plan. I'll set those up. >>> By the way, just to be clear of something, are you requesting the >>> Windows installers, or just offering to help make them? I'm not asking >>> to discredit you, but simply because if you do, that's an argument to >>> do it (because as I noted earlier, if enough people request it, I >>> could be convinced). >> >> You're asking because, if I do not myself want the installers, the >> offer of help is not useful? > > No, again, not trying to discredit you or anything. Just trying to > tally a vote :) > >> >> Yes, I want the installers, because I'm going to do more classes this >> year and I want my students to be able to do default installs of Sympy >> - because I use it all the time and I want them to use it to - as I do >> for the teaching notebooks. >> >> As a short thank you note, sympy has made a big difference to teaching >> because it's made it so much easier to integrate symbolic mathematics >> and numerical code. So, for my teaching, I want installing sympy to >> be as trivial and obvious as possible. "Go to pypi, download >> installer, run it". > > Well, you can't argue that if your top priority is to make things as > easy as possible for your students, then "install Anaconda" is the > simplest possible thing you can tell them, especially if you want to > include more than just SymPy. I want my students to leave with a system they will continue working with and building on, so it is OK with me that this isn't one-click. >> But - for the sake of the whole ecosystem - I want to avoid *having >> to* depend on the monolithic installers. > > SymPy is the last thing that will have to depend on Anaconda, because > it's pure Python, so building is not difficult. The "depending" is > more of an issue for compiled packages, where building, especially on > Windows, can be hugely painful. > > If the monolithicity is an issue for you, you can just install > Miniconda (http://repo.continuum.io/miniconda/) and install just what > you want. It sounds like we have a way forward with the buildbot installer builds then. I'll get onto that very soon. Cheers, Matthew -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sympy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sympy. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
