Setting the Backend

GWPopulation provides a unified interface to a number of numpy/scipy like APIs.

The backend can be set using gwpopulation.set_backend(backend), where backend is one of numpy, cupy, jax.

Downstream packages can automatically track the active backend using entry_points. With this set up, packages can use xp and scs in specified modules. Additionally, users can provide a full arbitrary scipy object to be used if anything beyond scipy.special is needed. An example of how to set numpy, scipy.special, and the toeplitz function from scipy.linalg via the setup.cfg file is shown below. Specification using pyproject.toml and setup.py follows slightly different syntax documentation for which can be found online.

[options.entry_points]
gwpopulation.xp =
    mypackage_foo = mypackage.foo
gwpopulation.scs =
    mypackage_foo = mypackage.foo
    mypackage_bar = mypackage.bar
gwpopulation.other =
    mypackage_baz_toeplitz = mypackage.baz:scipy.linalg.toeplitz

Note

Each module that wants to use the GWPopulation backend must be specified independently for the automatic propagation to work.

If there is a backend that you would like to use that is not currently supported, please open an issue.