[Rivet] [Yoda] cython version issue

[Andy Buckley]

Hi David,

I think this opens the question of what we want the YODA Python API to 
look like.

When Dave Mallows originally wrote it, he decided to make the Python API 
"Pythonic", i.e. using @property, changing interfaces to make use of 
multiple/tuple returns, etc. This is nice in some ways, but also 
confusing because the C++ and Python interfaces are not quite the same. 
If I remember correctly, those aliases are not so much for backward 
compatibility as for "Pythonic compatibility".

My feeling is that while I like Pythonic code, it will be easier and 
simpler for users if we can move to the Python API being as close as 
possible to the C++ one. There are quite a few places where being able 
to pass arguments (e.g. a bool for including overflows) to attributes 
that are currently arg-less properties would be useful. And hopefully we 
can make the C++ interface elegant enough that the Python one can be, 
too. It can't be an exact clone, due to function overloading/multiple 
dispatch, but we can get pretty close.

So... on that basis I would not mind ditching these convenience aliases. 
All-lower-case attrs are more Pythony, but this is just cosmetics and 
the Zen does say "there should only be one way to do it". But we should 
bump the version to 1.7.0 to indicate the maybe breaking change. Other 
thoughts? Migrating away from @property accessors is going to be a 
harder thing to do, so I'd like to hold that back until a bigger 
structural revamp in YODA2 (if we ever get the time to do that...)

Does *Rivet's* Cython interface make use of any aliasing like this, or 
does the block on Cython 0.24 solely come from YODA?

Thanks for grasping the nettle ;-)
Andy



On 20/09/16 09:18, David Grellscheid wrote:
> Hi again,
>
> the fix is quite simple, but which option do we want to take:
>
> (1) keep the backward compatibiltiy overloads like 'stddev = stdDev' for
> another version cycle
>
> (2) abandon it now, and only keep the new names, i.e. stdDev
>
> If I don't hear strong objections today, I'll commit version (2), we can
> revert any time of course.
>
> See you,
>
>   David
>
>
> On 20/09/2016 07:37, David Grellscheid wrote:
>> Hi Andy,
>>
>> On 19/09/2016 18:37, Andy Buckley wrote:
>>> I think there's a problem now that *getting* 0.23.5 is a bit awkward. In
>>> the bootstrap script I specifically download this:
>>
>> For end-users, it's still okay: 'pip install cython==0.23.5' works so
>> far.
>>
>>> Yes, this sucks. Do we know if this bug has been *reported* to Cython?
>>
>> It's on their tracker, but the discussion is one of those where people
>> don't agree it's actually a bug. I'll try to find the ref.
>>
>>   David
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-- 
Dr Andy Buckley, Lecturer / Royal Society University Research Fellow
Particle Physics Expt Group, University of Glasgow