Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] gr-howto-write-a-block refactored

[Martin Braun]

On Thu, Mar 04, 2010 at 07:15:19AM -0800, Eric Blossom wrote:
> This allows howto (or other things based on it) to install under a
> non-system prefix.  For systems using binary GR packages, this means
> that user written "out of tree code" will not have a conflict with the
> "gnuradio" namespace.
> 
> >From a high level point of view, this changes means that if you're
> using these blocks, you would now import them using
> 
>   import howto
> 
> instead of
> 
>   from gnuradio import howto

Hi Eric and list,

while this makes some things easier, I'm wondering if it wouldn't be
nice to keep the Python modules in some kind of GR-specific namespace. 

Take the howto example: imagine a new user tries to install it just to see
what happens. It's not completely unreasonable that another piece of
software would have a Python module called 'howto', which might result
in collisions. The same goes for other modules (I've written one called
'specest', this could be anything related to spectral estimation, the
name doesn't imply any GNU Radio).

If I use the howto example as a template for writing a new module (and I
assume most people do), do I need to make sure the name doesn't clash
with any other Python module? Or do I give it a name like 'gr-modulename'?

Frankly, I don't really know that much about the whole auto-stuff
internals, and in my local configuration I've never had any conflicts,
either, so I shouldn't be ranting about code changes. But it somehow
doesn't seem right to install modules right into some system path.
The 'old' method also had the advantage that I couldn't lose track of
my GR stuff, e.g. if I had to nuke my installation for some reason I'd
simply delete $PYTHONLIBS/gnuradio and if I had installed e.g. howto,
it would vanish as well.

Just my two Euro-cents...

Martin

-- 
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
Communications Engineering Lab (CEL)

Dipl.-Ing. Martin Braun
Research Associate

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KIT -- University of the State of Baden-Württemberg and
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