Just a note down of the upcoming changes to pytave - GSoC 2016

[Abhinav Tripathi]

Hi,
Since most of our discussed updates are done (a major setback has been windows build), I would like to note down the upcoming changes into PyTave and Symbolic which will be carried out.
This mail is meant to be an update on what is planned to be carried out in the project and take suggestions on whether/how to implement those.
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1- Provide an option to set execution namespace in pyexec to allow symbolic to run everything in its own namespace. Also it will provide an alternative for the hypothetical 'pystore' function that I proposed.
2- Drop the conversion of python objects to a bare minimum. (hence dictionaries, lists, tuples will remain as pyobjects)
3- Use (1) to implement calling of pyobjects with multiple arguments and probably extend the same logic to pycall.
Or maybe we can extend pycall so that a pyobject maybe passed instead of a function name. This will reduce duplicate code.
4- Edit all BIST tests in pytave and symbolic to adapt to these changes.
5- Solve a few more pytave bugs.
6- Try to reduce latency of Symbolic functions such as 'vpa'.
7- Fix the errors on travis which are causing build fail for symbolic.
8- work on merging pytave branch to master such that tests work on all IPCs (currently error messages differ on different IPCs and hence tests may fail on some IPC other than pytave)
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I have been at my hometown for the past few weeks and due to lack of proper internet connection, the work done has been quite slow. From this Tuesday onwards I can work again with full freedom and I intend to complete the above mentioned tasks within 10 days (starting Wednesday).
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Also, I will write the blog and wiki on windows build on Wednesday.
I have tried the windows build using DLLs from some other sites too (just out of curiosity) but didn't get any closer.
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As there are only a few weeks left for GSoC, please mention any other important tasks that should be given priority. And please give comments/suggestions on the tasks (or their order) I proposed here.
I fully intend to work on PyTave and Symbolic after GSoC too but I would like to complete as much work possible before GSoC ends.
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Just one more question (more of an octave question than pytave) -
If I write "s = 1" then s is considered to be double (not an integer!) in octave. Why is the default type double when there is no decimal point supplied?!
This caused some trouble for me. Because if I send it to pytave it will be converted to python float and hence I won't be able to use that variable as an index to a list.
I have to do "s = int8(1)"  or some other int type for this simple thing...
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Regards,
Abhinav