[SciPy-dev] binary compatibility question

[David Cournapeau]

josef.pktd@gmail.com wrote:
> I didn't follow the discussion of binary compatibility between
> different versions very closely.
>
> I compiled scipy 0.7.1 against numpy 1.3.0 and ran it in a virtualenv
> against numpy 1.2.1 and I get an immediate segfault when trying to run
> scipy.test().

Yes, you can't do that. The term binary compatible is too vague, which
is why there is some confusion in that matter I believe. There is
forward compatibility and backward compatibility:
    - Backward compatibility means that you can build something against
numpy version M, later update numpy to version N >M, and it still works.
numpy 1.3.0 is backward compatible with 1.2.1
    - Forward compatibility means that you can build something against
numpy version N, later downgrade to numpy version M < N, and it still
works. That's almost impossible to achieve without a huge amount of
work; we do not attempt it.

cheers,

David