[csw-maintainers] 64-bit python

[Dagobert Michelsen]

Hi Joshua,

Am 24.11.2008 um 03:21 schrieb Joshua Buysse:
>>> Am 21.11.2008 um 15:38 schrieb Philip Brown:
>>>> if not, then this might be a good reason to deviate from our usual
>>>> practice of "ship 64bit with 32bit package", and make a separate
>>>> "python64"  package.
>>>
>>> This goes equally well for Perl.
>>
>> *gag* *choke*... 64bit perl??? as if perl wasnt bloated  
>> enough?!!! :-}
>>
>> Actually, i'm not exactly sure why someone would want 64bit python  
>> either.
>> could someone enlighten us?
>
> Sadly, I had to build a 64-bit python internally a while back.   
> Researchers using bioinformatics toolkits (for purposes other than  
> what was intended, but cool idea).  The code was written in Python,  
> using FEBRL (http://datamining.anu.edu.au/projects/linkage.html).  
> They were linking individual census records between different years,  
> and the datafiles are in the tens or hundreds of gigs.  Damn thing  
> needed to load the entire set into memory, and even using MPI, it  
> was a beast.
>
> Researchers do use scripting languages with huge data sets,  
> especially in the biosciences.

IIRC Python is currently orphaned. As you seem to be
quite qualified: do you like to take over Python and
make a 64 bit version?

I guess we will need some discussion on how to handle
this in general for Python/Perl/OpenLDAP.


Best regards

   -- Dago