[Nipy-devel] python *2.4* deps

[Jarrod Millman]

On 3/2/07, Benjamin Thyreau <benjamin@decideur.info> wrote:
> There are some hard-coded python2.4 references, for example in the ./test
> script first line. Is there a legitimate reason for not having simply
> "/usr/bin/env python" ? Our runtime environment here is mostly focused on
> python2.5 and most distribution will do the same soon, so if nobody asks
> otherwise and nothing break, i'd like to drop those refs.

Hey Benjamin,

I think that the hard-coded reference to python2.4 was added almost a
year ago because we were using features added in 2.4, which weren't
available in 2.3.  I can't remember what features we were using; but I
know that we use decorators at least.  So we requiring python >= 2.4.

The problem is that Debian stable, I believe, is still using python
2.3 as the default.  So the change you made is going to break test for
Debian users.  Since Debian is so conservative in terms of upgrading
packages, this is a long-standing problem for Debian.  They were
discussing how to deal with it back in the python 1.5 to 2.0 days:
http://groups.google.com/group/debian.python/browse_thread/thread/12fbd795fd731de6?hl=en&seekm=87itdf28b3.fsf%40marant.org#link1
I think the Debian developers actual recommend against using env and
recommend expliciting stating which version of python you want (eg,
/usr/bin/python2.4).  That doesn't help us since we are interested in
using python >= 2.4.

We could use disutils to take care of figuring out what version of
python to use, but that doesn't help if you are running nipy from your
svn working directory.  Unfortunately, there isn't a clean solution to
this problem.

My suggestion would be for us to only run NIPY scripts that have been
installed and let distutils handle version rules.  Also we may want to
get rid of the test script.  Now that we are using NumpyTest, we
should run the tests interactively:
  import neuroimaging as nipy
  nipy.test()
I think this is probably a good idea anyway, since it would be more
similar to the way you test numpy and scipy.

Just out of curiosity, were you getting any errors running test using
python2.4?  Does anyone think we should keep test rather than trying
to replicate its functionality in the python shell?  If so, do you
have any suggestions how we could fix the she-bang to use python2.4
over 2.3, while also prefering 2.5 over 2.4?

Thanks,

-- 
Jarrod Millman
Computational Infrastructure for Research Labs
10 Giannini Hall, UC Berkeley
phone: 510.643.4014
http://cirl.berkeley.edu/