[SciPy-dev] Is it ok to depend on ctypes for scipy code ?

[Travis Oliphant]

Robert Kern wrote:

>Brian Granger wrote:
>  
>
>>>>    Subject says it all. Is is ok to depends on ctypes for scipy code,
>>>>or should the implementation be optional with a python fallback ?
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>I'd prefer not to depend on ctypes. More specifically, I'd prefer not to worry
>>>about building or finding non-extension shared libraries.
>>>      
>>>
>>Given the facts that i) ctypes now comes with python2.5 and ii) that
>>ctypes is proving itself to be extremely useful for wrapping C-code,
>>it seems like a shame to not be able to utilize ctypes for scipy code.
>> I do understand the issue with having dependencies on external shared
>>libraries that need to be built.  But, is there a reasonable way of
>>addressing this problem that would open the door for using ctypes in
>>scipy?
>>    
>>
>
>I haven't seen one, yet; otherwise, I wouldn't have made the objection.
>
>  
>
Robert is right.  The big problem is fixing distutils to build a shared 
library.  If that is fixed, then it would not be a hard thing to rely on 
ctypes for SciPy.  Until that is fixed, we can't do it.

There are several people who have started with this solution (I'm pretty 
sure it is solvable), but none of these solutions have ended up in 
distutils or numpy.distutils. 

-Travis