[pymvpa] MacPorts and pymvpa

[Yaroslav Halchenko]

> First, a thanks to the developers for all the work on what promises to  
> be a very fun python library.
have you tried it? is it fun? ;)

> I took on the task of creating a MacPorts Portfile for pymvpa. Here's  
cool! Michael has prepped the install for MacOS X but I guess portfile
should be more native, thus easier to install for mac users.

> -) removed references to svm_set_verbosity as this function was not in  
> the 2.88 version of libsvm
hm... indeed - we relied too much on the patched (with those
svm_set_verbosity exposed in Python) Debian shipped version, which
we also provided under 3rd/libsvm and which should be built/installed
whenever you build/install pymvpa (using Makefile though).

Is there 'original' port of libsvm which should be preferable over
the patched one we ship?

And where does it actually fail? set_verbosity is available in API since
2.84, so if you use our svmc.i while building -- everything should be
smooth, or am I missing something?

For now I just added additional check in externals if actually used svmc
(committed and pushed) has that function available, but since we are
building custom swig interface, I guess, there is no much use for
it...

> -) Added mvpa.support to the setup.py module install list, it was  
> missing and the first tutorial threw an error.
my bad -- I was the one who refactor to have mvpa.support but forgotten
to add it to setup.py

Fixed in my branch (yoh/master) and  maint/0.4

> The port has the following variants (optional support):

> -) pynifti
> -) scipy
> -) hcluster
> -) libsvm

There is no yet 
shogun
pywt
matplotlib/pylab

available in ports?

> As always, if any of the developers object to my submission I will  
> remove it quickly.

hm... why we should? ;) is it still released under expat (MIT)
license?  ;-) are copyright holders statements preserved? then license
is not violated and we only would vote 'go ahead'! We would also prefer
if you somehow point to the available sources of the project (if those
aren't natively provided with the port, pardon my ignorance on this
subject)

> The port isn't live yet (usually takes a day or  
> so), but if anyone can't wait I'll gladly email the ports for use in a  
> local overlay.
After it is available, it would be great if you sent us a patch against
doc/installation.txt where you would describe availability of
portfiles... or just sent a statement describing it so we could add
it into documentation.

If you feel that you might provide numerous patches/improvements --
don't hesitate to ask, and we will set you up with 'commit' rights, or
in git terms it better be, rights to push, since you are allowed to
commit locally whenever you like ;)

keep in touch
-- 
Yaroslav Halchenko
Research Assistant, Psychology Department, Rutgers-Newark
Student  Ph.D. @ CS Dept. NJIT
Office: (973) 353-1412 | FWD: 82823 | Fax: (973) 353-1171
        101 Warren Str, Smith Hall, Rm 4-105, Newark NJ 07102
WWW:     http://www.linkedin.com/in/yarik