pygsl: GSL interface for python

Status of GSL-Library:

The gsl-library is since version 1.0 stable and for general use. More
information about it at http://sources.redhat.com/gsl/.

Status of this interface:

We are collecting implementations of parts of gsl. So the interface is not
complete. The version 0.0.4 is a pre-release for pygsl-0.1 and honors
changes that came with gsl-1.0.

Requirements:

To build the interface, you will need

   * gsl-1.0 or better,
   * python2.0 or better and
   * a c compiler (like gcc).

Retriving the Interface:

You can download it here: http://pygsl.sourceforge.net

Installing GSL interface:

gsl-config must be on your path:

gzip -d -c pygsl-x.y.z.tar.gz|tar xvf-
cd pygsl-x.y.z
#do this with your prefered python version
#to set the gsl location explicitly use setup.py --gsl-prefix=/path/to/gsl
python setup.py build
# change to a id, that is allowed to do installation
python setup.py install

Ready....

Using pygsl

Just write

import pygsl.sf
print "%g+/-%g"%pygsl.sf.erf(1)

or

import pygsl.rng
rng=pygsl.rng.gsl_rng()
print rng.gaussian(1.0)

You may set the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH to find the gsl shared
object.

Uninstall GSL interface:

rm -r "python install path"/lib/python"version"/site-packages/pygsl

Supported Platforms:

   * Linux (Redhat 7.*/SuSE) with python2.* and gsl-1.*
   * SUN

Testing:

the directory test will contain several testsuites, based on python
unittest.

What is implemented:

   * module pygsl.sf: with 200 special functions
   * module pygsl.const: with 206 often used mathematical constants
   * module pygsl.ieee: access to the ieee-arithmetics layer of gsl
   * module pygsl.rng: provides several random number generators and
     different probability densities

For the exact function volume, please type:

import pygsl.sf
dir(pygsl.sf)

You can do this with the other modules too. The naming sceme is the same as
in gsl.

Documentation:

There will be a small tutorial, but the function reference can be found at
the gsl-reference.

Support:

Please send mails to the pygsl mailinglist.

Developement:

You can browse our cvs tree.

Type this to check out the actual version:
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.pygsl.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/pygsl login
Hit return for no password.
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.pygsl.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/pygsl co
pygsl

The script tools/extract_tool.py generates most of the special function
code.

ToDo:

Implement other parts: (I don't want to do that alone)

   * Chebyshev-Series
   * Complex Numbers
   * Matrix
   * Lin Algebra
   * Permutation
   * Sorting
   * Statistics
   * Fitting/Minimization
   * FFT
   * Numerical Integration

History:

   * a gsl-interface for python was needed for a project at center for
     applied informatics cologne.
   * gsl-0.0.3 was released at May 23, 2001
   * gsl-0.0.4 was released at January 8, 2002

Maintainer:

AchimGaedke@users.sourceforge.net
