[NumPy-Tickets] [NumPy] #2228: ABI change in 1.6.1

[NumPy Trac]

#2228: ABI change in 1.6.1
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 Reporter:  michael.s.gilbert@…          |       Owner:  somebody   
     Type:  defect                       |      Status:  new        
 Priority:  normal                       |   Milestone:  Unscheduled
Component:  numpy.core                   |     Version:  1.6.1      
 Keywords:                               |  
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Comment(by michael.s.gilbert@…):

 From the debian bug report:

 I found the cause of this bug: in
 numpy/core/include/numpy/ndarraytypes.h, in the enum NPY_TYPES, the
 value NPY_CHAR has changed between NumPy 1.5 and 1.6 (more precisely, it
 was increased by 3, because new types were introduced).

 python-scientific uses this enum value at several places (under its
 alias PyArray_CHAR). Hence the bug. I verified that replacing
 PyArray_CHAR by (PyArray_CHAR+3) in python-scientific and then compiling
 against NumPy 1.5 creates a package which is ABI compatible with NumPy
 1.6.

 This is clearly an ABI breakage in NumPy. I don't see how to fix it
 without bumping the ABI number. Since NPY_CHAR must apparently come
 after NPY_NTYPES in the enum (the latter counts the number of types), it
 seems difficult to patch NumPy 1.6 so that NPY_CHAR keeps the same value
 as in 1.5.

 What remains unclear to me is whether NPY_CHAR is really meant to be
 part of the external API. It looks like the NumPy maintainers are
 well-aware of ABI compatibility issues in this very enum (see the
 comments in the 1.6 source file), so maybe the change is on purpose. In
 that latter case, it is python-scientific which is buggy. That remains
 to be clarified.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://projects.scipy.org/numpy/ticket/2228#comment:2>
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