PyEphem now available for Python 3.0!

Date: 13 December 2008 Tags: computing, pyephem, python

Eager not to be left behind by the advance of history, I have released PyEphem tonight for Python 3.0! After updating its C-language routines earlier this week, as described in my previous post, and adjusting its Python syntax, I thought that my work was done — until I received a bug report from Reto Schüttel, an enterprising Swiss programmer. He had read my previous post, asked me for the location of PyEphem's Python 3.0 branch, downloaded it with bzr, and already tried it out, not only on his Linux machine, but also on his OS X machine!

While the first twenty revisions of my branch deal with simple Python 3.0 mechanics, I must congratulate Mr. Schüttel for most of the improvements in the subsequent dozen revisions. We not only exchanged emails all day as I produced one revision after another that I needed him to test, but he then joined me on IRC tonight until 3:30am in his time zone as we worked out the last problems.

The issues were all related to localization under OS X. The astronomy library underlying PyEphem used the C-language functions sscanf() and atof() to turn strings into numbers, and it turns out that these functions are very sensitive to locale under the specific combination of OS X and Python 3.0! Because of his locale, the functions wanted a comma instead of a period to separate whole numbers from their decimal fraction (so that π would have to be input like 3,141 rather than like 3.141 ). They also wanted month name abbreviations to be in German rather than English, ruining my test cases that check planet positions against Naval Observatory tables which use English month abbreviations like Jan, Feb, and Mar with very little regard for how the months would be spelled in German. We are still mystified by the combination of Python version and operation system that were necessary to cause this problem:

Python 2.6 under Linux: tests passed Python 3.0 under Linux: tests passed Python 2.6 under OS X: tests passed Python 3.0 under OS X: broken: sscanf()/atof() change with locale

But the tests worked fine if he put LANG=C on the command line.

To work around this problem, I discovered a wonderful PyOS_ascii_strtod() function in Python's C library that avoided all of the problems that I was having with localization, and so I gradually rewrote the astronomy routines to use that function instead. Fixing the problems with month names was easier; instead of trying to make Python convert month abbreviations by passing the '%b' conversion character to time.strptime() , I simply converted months to integers myself and then passed the integers in with the simpler '%m' format character. It was only late at night that we finally tracked down every routine that was misbehaving.

The final puzzle was how to release my new software. The Python Package Index does not yet allow a project to offer separate source code archives for both the Python 2.x and the 3.0 version of a project. There might be some clever way of storing both versions of the source code in the same .tar.gz file, but the packages I see on PyPI that already support both 2.x and 3.0 contain enough #ifdef statements to convince me that I want to keep my branches separate!

I was saved by a peculiarity of my project. Though it provides the Python package named ephem , the actual project on PyPI has always been named “PyEphem” instead. The product has to have the “Py” in front, you see, to distinguish it both from the original text-screen ephem command and the modern XEphem graphical application, and my first instinct had been to name the project after the product. But as I gained experience with PyPI, it seemed more and more awkward that programmers who wanted their programs to be able to:

import ephem

had to remember to type something different when installing:

easy_install pyephem

Since I had been wanting to switch PyPI names anyway, I suddenly saw my chance! I have now released the new Python 3.0 version of PyEphem under the actual package name ephem and will continue to maintain the 2.x version of the package separately under the old pyephem name. Obviously, this solution only works because of my project's unique circumstances; I have no idea what other projects should do who also want to come out with their new Python 3.0 versions this weekend.

Fans of PyEphem should rest assured that when I develop new features, I will be adding them to both versions of PyEphem for probably at least the next decade. I have absolutely no intention of abandoning or slowing development of the Python 2.x version of the library; I simply wanted the library available to users of the new platform. As always, feel free to email me with bugs, suggestions, and new features — and, enjoy using PyEphem and Python!

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