[Discuss-gnuradio] Conversion from Python Numeric to numpy on trunk

[Johnathan Corgan]

There is about to be a change to the GNU Radio trunk code that will
require installation of additional software before certain things will
work again correctly.

GNU Radio uses the Python Numeric library in certain places to perform
fast array math from within Python.  The Numeric library is mature but
has been superseded by the 'numpy' package for future development.  The
two are nearly identical in external API, but numpy has some syntax
changes and a different internal implementation.

Recently a bug was reported when using Python 2.5 and 64-bit
architectures ("matrices are not aligned for copy").  This was Numeric
specific, and rather than try to fix Numeric, which is no longer
maintained, GNU Radio has been updated to use numpy instead, which does
not show the issue.

For GNU Radio users that are running a version of the trunk software
(vs. the 3.0.x release), once we update the trunk with the changes,
you'll need to install they numpy package (you can leave Numeric
installed if other software on your platform still needs it) in order to
use several of the "instrumentation" blocks (scopesink, waterfallsink,
fftsink), as well as the digital packet handling and modulator and
demodulator blocks.

Most systems should already have a suitable version of numpy ready for
installation using their respective package managers.  The original
numpy package may be found at:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1369&package_id=175103

Because of the variety of platforms GNU Radio is used on, there may be
some problems with specific systems that we'll need to go back and look
at.  The GNU Radio wiki pages that deal with installation on different
platforms still need to be updated to reflect the change.

-- 
Johnathan Corgan
Corgan Enterprises LLC
http://corganenterprises.com