Pygobject workaround

This merge request allows users to build gstreamer pipelines with newer pygobject by working around missing type conversions. There has been no movement from the community on this despite it being reported

• https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/gstreamer/gst-python/-/issues/50
• https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/pygobject/-/issues/488

We have about 3 years (and counting) of incompatibility between pygobject and gstreamer regarding array properties for elements. When it is fixed upstream, it will be easy to revert this change or leave it in place until backwards compatibility for the incompatible code is no longer needed.

I was able to run an end-to-end small offline analysis using the igwn environment. There are python incompatibilities in our plotting scripts (which have nothing to do with this merge request), but the core codes all worked and I pushed through a result

BEFORE

AFTER

Why the change? I don't know, but we can't even begin to investigate without the work in this MR.

I added one additional value error and then tested some reasonable cases - of course users could still figure out some way to break this, but I think the state at the moment is reasonable so I will merge

from gstlal import pipeio
import numpy

# set works
pipeio.format_property(set([1,2,3]))
# tuple works
pipeio.format_property(tuple([1,2,3]))
# dictionary works
pipeio.format_property({k:1 for k in [1,2]})
# generator works
pipeio.format_property((x for x in [1,2,3,]))
# 1D array works
pipeio.format_property(numpy.ones((2)))
# 2D array works
pipeio.format_property(numpy.ones((2,2)))
# 3D array does not - a value error is raised
pipeio.format_property(numpy.ones((2,2,2)))

added 1 commit

• 4e04daf7 - add assert for higher D arrays

Compare with previous version

added 13 commits

• 4e04daf7...6e67f141 - 7 commits from branch master
• c17d9727 - Patrick Godwin's code: work around backwards incompatible pygobject handling of arrays
• 15f8e7a2 - Patrick Godwin's code: work around backwards incompatible pygobject handling of arrays
• 10215d2b - Patrick Godwin's code: work around backwards incompatible pygobject handling of arrays
• 4be53f91 - gstlal/python/gstpipetools.py: pygobject work around
• fe38fbf3 - handle 1D arrays
• 4ee39870 - add assert for higher D arrays

Compare with previous version

merged