[Biopython-dev] [Biopython] Google Summer of Code 2014 - Call for project ideas

[Peter Cock]

On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 4:19 PM, Tiago Antao <tra at popgen.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Thu, 27 Feb 2014 16:12:31 +0000
> Peter Cock <p.j.a.cock at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> P.S. The KGML module Leighton's talking about is here:
>> https://github.com/biopython/biopython/pull/173
>
>
> Would this add a new library dependency to Biopython (PIL)? I am all in
> favour of that (as independent modules could have their dependencies
> without causing problems - as you only need the dependency if you
> actually use the module).
>
> But that would require the revision of the module dependency policy,
> right? Which until now has been a bit on the conservative side...

We've been conservative/hard-line on build time dependencies
(i.e. only NumPy), but there are now quite a few 'soft' run time
Python dependencies (e.g. NetworkX, MySQLdb, ...).

> I am thinking here matplotlib and scipy, for instance...
>
> Tiago

IIRC, ReportLab already requires PIL for any bitmap output,
so this isn't a new 'soft dependency'.

Peter