[SAGA-RG] Fwd: SAGA python bindings...

[Sylvain Reynaud]

Le 15/08/2011 12:35, Andre Merzky a écrit :
> Hi all,
>
> one of our discussion topics for next OGF is (again) the evolution
> of the SAGA python bindings.  To give some context of the current
> discussions, I forward the below email thread between the jSAGA group
> and the SAGA-C++ group, for your interest and input.
>
> Best, Andre.
>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: M.A. Santcroos<m.a.santcroos at amc.uva.nl>
> Date: Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 11:02 AM
> Subject: Re: SAGA python bindings...
> To: Sylvain Reynaud<Sylvain.Reynaud at in2p3.fr>, Andre Merzky<andre at merzky.net>
> Cc: Julien Devemy<julien.devemy at in2p3.fr>
>
>
> Hi all,
Hi all,


> I waited a bit with responding, assuming that Julien is back now :-)
Sorry, I was wrong about his holidays dates ; we will have to wait 10 
days more before he will be back.


> A short intro about myself, I'm working on grid related things at
> the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam. Because of our presence
> in Netherlands/Europe we are mainly interested in gLite.  Since a
> couple of months I've been working closely with the SAGA-C++ group
> (and now also formally a part of that).
>
> At the AMC we've (of course) always been interested in programmatic
> access to the Grid middleware, and have found that spread over
> multiple packages. We've used some of the Python/Java APIs provided
> with gLite, and we have quite some usage of the VLET API (Java). As
> the VLET is nowhere near a standard, we have interest in moving to SAGA.
>
> Some comments in line below.
>
> On 8/8/11 11:20 , "Sylvain Reynaud"<Sylvain.Reynaud at in2p3.fr>  wrote:
>> Yes, JPySAGA implements the same python binding as JySAGA (the python
>> wrapper on top JavaSAGA), but as far as I remember Julien also made a
>> few compatibility tests with the wrapper that implements this binding on
>> top of SAGA-C++.
>> We were not able to get everything working because this wrapper was
>> still under development, but we were at least able to implement the
>> simple use-cases that we shown in our demo at Brussels last year, in
>> order to show that SAGA-C++ and JSAGA could be used together in the same
>> application.
> One of the issues in the JPySAGA is the usage of the "create" class
> methods. Do you know the history of that?
No, I don't know the history, but since JySAGA has been developed on top 
of JavaSAGA, I can imagine that it was influenced by the "create" 
methods of the Java binding.


> It feels very un-pythonic,
> and is also different than the SAGA-C++ Python bindings.
>
>
>>> Either way, as we do have a significant community of python users for
>>> SAGA, we are still interested in driving a uniform python bindings
>>> forward.  Would you be interested in discussing that topic again,
>>> or is that at the moment out of scope for your group?
>> Yes, we are still very interested in discussing that topic.
>> I put in CC Julien (in holidays this week) because he has developed
>> JPySAGA and he knows Python far better than I do.
> Good. As said, we are interested particularly in JSAGA because of gLite
> support.
> Our language choices are Java and Python, so I already proposed to assist
> in sorting out the python differences between the various implementations.
I know that Julien is also very concerned with having "pythonic" APIs, 
and I think he would be probably interested in contributing to select 
the most "pythonic" parts of each SAGA Python binding, in order to 
converge on a SAGA binding as "pythonic" as possible.

Andre, do you think this would be the right way to synchronize the 
implementations, or is it already too late to do such changes in the 
binding (considering the existing SAGA-python users community) ?


>>> PS.: you are likely aware thet OGF-33 is being held n Lyon, in mid
>>> September.  Do you plan to attend, by any chance?
>> Yes, I am already registered. I really have no excuse for not doing the
>> "travel" since I can see the place of the conference through the window
>> of my desktop!  ;-)
> Note that I will also be in Lyon, so I would be happy to meet up with you.
I will be happy too.

Regards,
Sylvain


> Regards,
>
> Mark
>
>
>
>