Add type hints / annotations to `array_namespace()`: `array_api_strict` as return type?

[34j]

Without type hints, it is very inconvenient because of spelling errors of array_api functions. As array_api_compat seems to be a superset of array_api_strict, I would like to propose to simply set the return type of array_namespace() to array_api_strict, although it might be confusing.

array-api-compat/array_api_compat/common/_helpers.py

Line 424 in c5ef3dc

def array_namespace(*xs, api_version=None, use_compat=None):

from typing import overload
import array_api_strict

array_api_compat_type = array_api_strict

@overload
def array_namespace(*xs, api_version=None, use_compat: None=None) -> array_api_compat_type:
	...

[asmeurer]

I think upstream work to make a protocol out of the array API namespace would be what we'd want here.

data-apis/array-api#685
data-apis/array-api#267

Setting the return type as array_api_strict seems wrong. array_api_strict isn't a type, it's a module, and it isn't even the module that's returned in most cases. The correct return type would be typing.ModuleType, which we can definitely add, although I don't think that alone would make it infer much.

[lucascolley]

let's close this one - we would of course like to annotate all of array-api-compat once the necessary tools are available in array-api-typing.

[34j]

I just want to make sure that, once array-api-typing is complete, get_namespace() will return ArrayNamespace or something, is that right? I hope you could leave this issue open as development of array-api-typing is resumed. (Not sure why you have closed this. I understand that you want to reduce the number of open Issues though.)

[lucascolley]

once array-api-typing is complete, get_namespace() will return ArrayNamespace or something, is that right?

That sounds right 👍

(Not sure why you have closed this. I understand that you want to reduce the number of open Issues though.)

Yes, sorry, in case it wasn't clear, my rationale for closing was that:

• this is not actionable right now
• this doesn't track something that we might 'forget' about later. In other words, once the work in array-api-typing is done, addressing this issue will be an obvious next step.