[Numpy-discussion] Status of Numeric

[Konrad Hinsen]

On 19.01.2004, at 21:32, Travis Oliphant wrote:

> These are the two options we can see:
> * freeze old Numeric 23.x  and make all changes to Numeric 24.x  still 
> keeping Numeric separate from  SciPy
> * freeze old Numeric 23.x and subsume Numeric into SciPy essentially 
> creating a new SciPy arrayobject that is fast and lightweight.  
> Anybody wanting this new array object would get it by installing 
> scipy_base.  Numeric would never change in the future but the array in 
> scipy_base would.

That depends on the exact nature of the changes. My view is that any 
package that is upwards-compatible with Numeric (except for bug fixes 
of course) should be called Numeric and distributed as such. Any 
package that is intentionally incompatible with Numeric in some 
important aspect should not be called Numeric. There is a lot of code 
out there that builds on Numeric, and some of it is hardly maintained 
any more, although there are still users around. Those users expect to 
be able to upgrade Numeric without breaking their code.

Konrad.