As I got no response to my original email, I figured I'd ask one more time
just in case somebody who could answer my question(s) missed it the first
time...
Is array_interface actually being deprecated in favor of PEP 3118?
If so, when?
Are there eventual plans for python-side buffer specification of PEP 3118
protocol, in order for users to be able to use PEP 3118 with ctypes-extended
libraries?
Besides this list is there anywhere else I can check for this information?
The numpy 1.4 documentation seems to suggest that it will be deprecated
http://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy-1.4.x/reference/arrays.interface.html
while the 1.6 and current development versions of documentation don't
mention deprecation, but simply inform users that PEP 3118 exists as an
alternative
http://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/arrays.interface.html
Thus my confusion...
- Sam
On 7/13/11 6:15 PM, "numpy-discussion-requ...@scipy.org"
<numpy-discussion-requ...@scipy.org> wrote:
> Message: 3
> Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:47:59 -0500
> From: Sam Quinan <samqui...@gmail.com>
> Subject: [Numpy-discussion] Fate of Numpy's Array Interface
> To: <numpy-discussion@scipy.org>
> Message-ID: <ca438acf.6070%samqui...@gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>
> Hey,
>
> So I'm working on interfacing numpy ndarrays with an n-dimensional array
> representation that exists as part of a massive custom C library. Due to the
> size of the library, hand-coding a c-extension for the library just was not
> really an option; so we wound up using gcc_xml to generate the proper ctypes
> code. This works great for accessing our C functions within python, but not
> so much for trying share memory between numpy and our custom array
> representations... Passing a pointer to the numpy array data to ctypes is
> fairly simple, but figuring out the proper way to get memory from ctypes
> into numpy has been problematic.
>
> I know that PEP 3118 is supposed to be superseding the numpy array
> interface, but PEP 3118 can only be specified on the C side, which is
> problematic for anybody using ctypes to wrap their C code. The legacy
> __array_interface__ allows for a python side specification of data buffers,
> but there appears to be no corresponding interface capability in the PEP
> 3118 protocol. On top of that add the fact that Python's own support for PEP
> 3118 has some major bugs (ctypes throwing invalid PEP 3118 codes -
> http://bugs.python.org/issue10746 :: issues with python's memoryview object
> - http://bugs.python.org/issue10181), and PEP 3118 seems like a nightmare to
> deal with. At the same time though, I don't want to simply use the legacy
> array interface if it's going to be completely deprecated in the near
> future.
>
> How long before the legacy __array_interface__ goes the way of the dodo?
> When that happens, are there plans to add support for a python side
> interface to the PEP 3118 protocol? If not, what is the proper way to
> interface a ctypes wrapped library with PEP 3118?
>
> Thanks,
>
> - Sam Quinan
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