[Pyrex] SageX merged back to Pyrex?

[Stefan Behnel]

skip at pobox.com wrote:
>     Andreas> Stupid question, why do you want it to be merged back? AFAIK,
>     Andreas> SageX is way more actively maintained than Pyrex?
> 
> My understanding is/was that SageX is a fork of Pyrex.  I also see mention
> of something called lxml-Pyrex which is different in some ways as well,
> though how, I couldn't tell from the couple posts I saw that referenced it.
> All these forks make it confusing.  Do I install Pyrex?  SageX?  lxml-Pyrex?
> What do I gain/give up with each one?  I'm investigating this for adoption
> at work.  I can hardly recommend one over the others at this point.

lxml's Pyrex version has mainly two advantages over the standard Pyrex
distribution: it supports Python 2.5 on 64-bit machines and a module API at
the C level, i.e. external Pyrex modules can call into other modules through
fast C function calls.

SageX has support for Python 2.5 already and there is an intention to merge
the C-API code into SageX, so that the lxml fork of Pyrex can go away.

Currently, SageX (let's call it cython, shall we?) is an advanced version of
Pyrex that has several additions already integrated that never made it into
mainline Pyrex. Some of these seem to be GCC specific, however, so work needs
to be done to make it a) more portable and b) more compatible again, so that
people can use it as a drop-in replacement for their existing Pyrex code.

So I think the current status is: if you need (or want to benefit from) any of
the features in cython, use it. Otherwise, stay with Pyrex for now, to make it
easier for your users to build your software. Pyrex is available on many
platforms and is easily installed with easy_install. I think EasyInstall
support should actually be one of the first goals of the cython project.

If you want to provide a public C-API for your Pyrex modules, you currently
need the lxml fork of Pyrex, but hopefully, things will get going quickly
here, so that cython will support it, too.

Stefan