[Deb-scipy-devel] Bug#389118: python-numpy: will not import unless python-numpy-ext is installed

[Robert Kern]

Matthias Klose wrote:
> Robert Kern writes:
>> Thank you. As an upstream numpy developer, I can verify that the contents of 
>> python-numpy-ext cannot be separated from python-numpy.
> 
> I assume the separation of the base package and the extension packages
> comes from the Numeric and numarray packages in debian. The extension
> did make sense to avoid the installation of the blas and lapack
> libraries; basic functionality can be used without having these
> libraries be installed.  In which ways did numpy change, so that this
> is not possible anymore?

numpy is a unitary package, now. You can't remove subpackages and still have a
functional numpy. Look at the __init__.py:

    import linalg
    import fft
    import random

The core has the same optional dependency on BLAS as the linalg subpackage for
the numpy.dot() function, and the Debian package python-numpy already has the
dependency on LAPACK and BLAS Debian packages, so folding python-numpy-ext into
it will not add any more dependencies than already exist.

Also, for f2py to be functional, the two files in python-numpy-dev also need to
be present. It would save everyone some grief if those files were in
python-numpy itself. At the very least, python-numpy-dev should be in the
Recommends of python-numpy, and the errors one gets when trying to use f2py
without it should be documented in python-numpy's README.Debian such that users
know what is going on.

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
 that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
 an underlying truth."
  -- Umberto Eco