py27-wxpython-2.8: Missing "numeric" dependency in wxpython-2.8

[fhgwright (Fred Wright)]

Grass stopped working, apparently due to the numpy upgrade from 1.8 to 1.9. The error is:

  File "/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wx-2.8-gtk2-unicode/wx/lib/plot.py", line 132, in <module>
    raise ImportError, "Numeric,numarray or NumPy not found. \n" + msg
   ...

The relevant code is:

# Needs Numeric or numarray or NumPy
try:
    import numpy.oldnumeric as _Numeric
except:
    try:
        import numarray as _Numeric  #if numarray is used it is renamed Numeric
    except:
        try:
            import Numeric as _Numeric
        except:
           ...

It appears that numpy was able to satisfy this until the numpy port was upgraded to 1.9, where "oldnumeric" had been removed. I was able to work around the problem by installing py27-numeric.

The wxpython-2.8 package doesn't list either numpy or numeric as dependencies, which may have led to the failure to discover the downside of upgrading the numpy port.

It appears that there was a fix in wxwidgets 3.0 to fix the compatibility problem with numpy 1.9, but the only variant of grass that claims to work (experimentally) with V3.0 doesn't actually work.

[mojca (Mojca Miklavec)]

Dependency added in r125512. Please let me know if that solves the problem. Grass should be upgraded to 7.0 anyway (see #44056).

[jmroot (Joshua Root)]

We do have py-numarray BTW. It currently lacks a py27 subport but that’s easily fixed. Just mentioning it since the quoted code prefers numarray over Numeric.

[mojca (Mojca Miklavec)]

It's not really clear to me which one it prefers. It's first trying to use the deprecated/removed library, then numarray which it calls _Numeric (making one think that Numeric might be the preferred one). To me it looks as if they tried to list packages in "reverse order" ;), but I don't want to claim anything (if numarray is present, that one would be used).

I also get a feeling that there are no users of py-numarray given that nobody cared enough to add support for py27 so far. I agree that it's trivial to add py27 to it, but maybe we could just as well remove that module altogether (if nobody misses it)?

[fhgwright (Fred Wright)]

Curiouser and curiouser. I now see the dependency listed for this package, and I also see it listed as a recursive dependency for grass (provided that I specify the installed variants explicitly; it doesn't do that by default). But I'm able to uninstall py27-numeric without any errors regarding dependent ports, which of course breaks grass again until I reinstall it. That's probably not a bug in the port itself. :-)

BTW, I don't think this bug has anything to do with grass per se; it's just where I observed it. Though it's presumably limited to whatever subset of wxpython clients that uses plot.py.