Incompatibility between Matplotlib and Numpy

If you are running Fedora 9 you may have run in to this problem (at least one other guy did). Taking a look at the bugzilla over at RedHat shows that this has been a recurring problem over the past couple years (first cropping up in FC5). It seems that the packagers for numpy and matplotlib are having trouble synchronizing the updates for numpy and matplotlib. They are fast moving projects so one occasionally changes the API quietly and breaks the other. Of course there are other dependencies that probably play in to the decision of when to update a particular package, but this is the one that breaks my workflow.

The easiest fix for me was to download the latest matplotlib sources and compile/install them manually:

$ tar -zxvf matplotlib-0.98.5.2.tar.gz
$ cd matplotlib-0.98.5.2
$ python setup.py build
$ su
$ python setup.py install

This is less than ideal, because now I'm not running a "stock" Fedora where all of my software updates are taken care of automagically, but the increase in work-load is negligible.

A work-around for the incompatibility between numpy and matplotlib that requires editing some of the python sources:
http://www.mail-archive.com/numpy-discussion@scipy.org/msg13753.html

Or you can just upgrade to Fedora 10. Unfortunately that's not an option for me because of a closed proprietary device driver that relies on < 2.6.27 kernels. I haven't compiled my own kernels since FC1 days, and don't really feel like getting back into the habit.