[cctbxbb] Tidy up CCTBX

[Dr. Robert Oeffner]

Hi Graeme and others,

Thank you for your replies. I was not aware of all the dependencies between 
the various modules within the cctbx.
As I don't know much more about the cctbx than other developers I am not 
sure what the best course of action would be. Here are some random thoughts.

Probably never gonna happen but, ideally a code freeze for 2 or 3 weeks 
stopping anyone from amending or adding code to the cctbx could be spent on 
disentangling modules from one another and the cctbx.

I agree that there appear to be some other projects that do not belong to 
the cctbx. For instance, I think fable was conceived by Ralf as a one time 
conversion tool of F77 code to C++ code. Not sure if it is used anymore.

As for pip install ability, yes that sounds like a good idea to achieve if 
it is done from the lowest level first, i.e. the libtbx submodule.

Documenting how to build derived projects using the CCTBX should encourage 
people not to add unrelated code into the cctbx. Although SConscripts are 
familiar to many of us, to others SConscript or bootstrap are quite alien 
and opaque ways of building from sources.

cheers,


Rob


-----Original Message----- 
From: Graeme.Winter at diamond.ac.uk
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2018 8:58 AM
To: cctbxbb at phenix-online.org
Cc: rjr27 at cam.ac.uk
Subject: Re: [cctbxbb] Tidy up CCTBX

Hi Rob

More thinking on this one, following from a little conversation over the 
weekend at this end

If we were looking to be able to package cctbx in a more Pythonic manner - 
i.e. to allow pip install - would it make sense to start at the bottom 
rather than at the top? i.e. libtbx - which is pure Python with deliberately 
no dependencies - would be a good place to start? The lower level code is 
also more static so a safer candidate for pip installing compared with some 
of the more rapid changing things…