On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 1:13 AM, Stefan Behnel <[email protected]> wrote: > Terry Reedy, 17.01.2011 22:38: >> A few other details confuse me, but enough for now. > > It's helpful to be reminded from time to time that the documentation shows > the usual "features" of an underfinanced OpenSource project. Part of it was > inherited from the original Pyrex documentation and suffers from bit rot, > and some other parts were copied over from the Wiki or from talk notes and > continue to be badly integrated with the rest.
I recently got some new nontrivial NSF funding for a Cython workshop. A "docathon" would be a great activity at such a workshop. When some Cython developers are ready to all get flown somewhere cool to work together on Cython for a few days, all expenses paid, let me know. I'm serious. -- William > > Maybe we should call out a docathon on the cython-users list to see if we > can't get some of our happy users to give something back by fixing up the > obvious problems in the documentation. Some have done so in the past > already, even without being asked. > > >> My main interest at the >> moment is whether Cython is a viable third method (versus swig and ctypes) >> for wrapping C library code for access from Python. It seems to sit in >> between somewhat. > > Regarding a comparison with SWIG, you might find this interesting: > > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg01354.html > > I do not consider SWIG a real alternative, except when it can play its > single joker, i.e. you want to generate and maintain a substantial set of > identical wrappers for different languages. You might want to do that if > you are the author of the library you wrap, but it's a lot less likely that > you want to do it if you are a user of the library. > > I consider ctypes a viable alternative with two main advantages: a) it's > part of CPython, which b) makes it plain Python to work with. Even PyPy > supports it (IIRC), and Jython has at least been thinking about it for a > while. > > Cython will always depend on CPython (*), on a C compiler, and on the > ability to install and use binary extension modules. However, once you > cross that barrier, the main advantages of Cython strike immediately: it > has a much more natural way to deal with external C code than ctypes > (assuming the same level of C knowledge that you also need for ctypes), and > it's substantially faster. > > Stefan > > > (*) or at least on its C-API - there's also work being done on a port to > IronPython > _______________________________________________ > Cython-dev mailing list > [email protected] > http://codespeak.net/mailman/listinfo/cython-dev > -- William Stein Professor of Mathematics University of Washington http://wstein.org _______________________________________________ Cython-dev mailing list [email protected] http://codespeak.net/mailman/listinfo/cython-dev
