Time for a ChangeLog!

1.30-SNAPSHOT

This release is a big one. With finalizing require-python we have a clear way to use Python in daily use and make it look good in normal Clojure usage. There is a demo of facial recognition using some of the best open systems for doing this; this demo would absolutely not be possible without this library due to the extensive use of numpy and cython to implement the face detection. We can now interact with even very complex Python systems with roughly the same performance as a pure Python system.

Finalized require-python

Lots of work put in to make the require-python pathway work with classes and some serious refactoring overall.

Better Numpy Support

• Most of the datatype libraries math operators supported by numpy objects (+,-,etc).
• Numpy objects can be used in datatype library functions (like copy, make-container) and work in optimized ways.

libpython-clj.python.numpy-test> (def test-ary (py/$a np-mod array (->> (range 9)
                                                                        (partition 3)
                                                                        (mapv vec))))
#'libpython-clj.python.numpy-test/test-ary
libpython-clj.python.numpy-test> test-ary
[[0 1 2]
 [3 4 5]
 [6 7 8]]
libpython-clj.python.numpy-test> (dfn/+ test-ary 2)
[[ 2  3  4]
 [ 5  6  7]
 [ 8  9 10]]
libpython-clj.python.numpy-test> (dfn/> test-ary 4)
[[False False False]
 [False False  True]
 [ True  True  True]]

Bugs Fixed

• Support for java character <-> py string
• Fixed potential crash related to use of delay mechanism and stack based gc.
• Added logging to complain loudly if refcounts appear to be bad.

1.29

• Found/fixed issue with ->jvm and large Python dictionaries.

1.28

• (range 5) - Clojure ranges <-> Python ranges when possible.
• bridged types derive from collections.abc.* so that they pass instance checks in libraries that are checking for generic types.
• Really interesting unit test for generators, ranges and sequences.

1.27

• Fixed bug where (as-python {:is_train false}) results in a dictionary with a none value instead of a false value. This was found through hours of debugging why mxnet's forward function call was returning different values in Clojure than in Python.

1.26

• python startup work
• python generators & clojure transducers
• requre-python reload fix
• Bugfix with require-python :reload semantics.

1.25

Fixed (with tests) major issue with require-python.

1.24

Clojure's range is now respected in two different ways:

• (range) - bridges to a Python iterable
• (range 5) - copies to a Python list

1.23

Equals, hashcode, nice default .toString of Python types:

user> (require '[libpython-clj.python :as py])
nil
user> (def test-tuple (py/->py-tuple [1 2]))
#'user/test-tuple
user> (require '[libpython-clj.require :refer [require-python]])
nil
user> (require-python '[builtins :as bt])
nil
user> (bt/type test-tuple)
builtins.tuple
user> test-tuple
(1, 2)
user> (def new-tuple (py/->py-tuple [3 4]))
#'user/new-tuple
user> (= test-tuple new-tuple)
false
user> (= test-tuple (py/->py-tuple [1 2]))
true
user> (.hashCode test-tuple)
2130570162
user> (.hashCode (py/->py-tuple [1 2]))
2130570162
user> (require-python '[numpy :as np])
nil
user> (def np-ary (np/array [1 2 3]))
#'user/np-ary
user> np-ary
[1 2 3]
user> (bt/type np-ary)
numpy.ndarray
user> (py/python-type *1)
:type

1.22

Working to make more Python environments work out of the box. Currently have a testcase for conda working in a clean install of a docker container. There is now a new method: libpython-clj.python.interpreter/detect-startup-info that attempts call python3-config --prefix and python3 --version in order to automagically configure the Python library.

1.21

Bugfix release. Passing infinite sequences to Python functions was causing a hang as libpython-clj attempted to copy the sequence. The current calling convention does a shallow copy of things that are list-like or map-like, while bridging things that are iterable or don't fall into the above categories.

This exposed a bug that caused reference counting to be subtly wrong when Python iterated through a bridged object. And that was my life for a day.

1.20

With too many huge things we had to skip a few versions!

require-python

require-python works like require but it works on Python modules. require-python dynamically loads the module and exports it's symbols into a Clojure namespace. There are many options available for this pathway.

This implements a big step towards embedding Python in Clojure in a simple, clear, and easy to use way. One important thing to consider is the require has a :reload: option to allow you to actively develop a Python module and test it via Clojure.

This excellent work was in large part done by James Tolton.

• require-python-test

Clojure-defined Python classes

You can now extend a tuple of Python classes (or implement a new one). This system allows, among many things, us to use frameworks that use derivation as part of their public API. Please see classes-test for a documented example of a simple pathway through the new API. Note that if you use vanilla ->py-fn functions as part of the class definition you won't get access to the self object.

Bugfixes

A general stability bugfix was made that was involved in the interoperation of Clojure functions within Python. Clojure functions weren't currently adding a refcount to their return values.

1.16

Fixed a bug where the system would load multiple Python libraries, not stopping after the first valid library loaded. There are two ways to control the system's Python library loading mechanism:

1. Pass in a library name in initialize!
2. alter-var-root the list of libraries in libpython-clj.jna.base before calling initialize!.

1.15

Moar syntax sugar --

user> (py/$. numpy linspace)
<function linspace at 0x7fa6642766a8>
user> (py/$.. numpy random shuffle)
<built-in method shuffle of numpy.random.mtrand.RandomState object at 0x7fa66410cca8>

1.14

libpython-clj now searches for several shared libraries instead of being hardcoded to just one of them. Because of this, there is now:

libpython-clj.jna.base/*python-library-names*

This is a sequence of library names that will be tried in order.

You can also pass in the desired library name as part of the initialize! call and only this name will be tried.