Make clear for users

[vsoch]

Heyo! I just want to note that there is some redundant functionality now with https://github.com/NeuroVault/pyneurovault, and I’m worried the two repos under the same org could be confusing to users. I’m happy to support switching over to this new client, but could we please:

• Make sure that all equivalent functionalities are supported here
• Update the other repository with a depreciation notice when that is done.

Just curious, why did you not contribute to the library here, and instead start from scratch? It’s generally good practice in open source to not step on toes like this, but to try and work together.

[adelavega]

Hi @vsoch

Apologies for the extremely belated response. We're taking some time this week to do maintenance on NeuroVault.

So the story with pynv is that it was started by a different group for their own internal use (this was back in like 2016).
At some point I needed a library to push to NeuroVault, and (not sure if its still the case) but at the time only pynv supported that so I used it. The library sat inactive until it needed some bug fixes, and when doing that I thought it would be better to move it to the NeuroVault organization so that it would not be totally abandoned.

In any case, now that we're taking a few days to do NeuroVault maintenance, I thought it would be a good idea to resolve this conflict, and settle on a single "recommended" library for NeuroVault API access in Python. We are going to be generating OpenAPI spec which can automate the process of interacting w/ the API and validating requests.

re: pyneurovault it looks like it needs some maintenance as well, so we need to decide if it makes sense to upgrade either of these libraries, or go w/ a OpenAPI auto-generated solution.

we also plan on revamping the neurovault docs to make it more obvious that you can access NeuroVault w/ an official library. There was always some confusion about this which led to libraries like nilearn developing their own ways of interfacing w/ NeuroVault. They are about to deprecate that functionality so I think if there is a solid "official" solution they would use it.

lmk if you have any thoughts!

[vsoch]

Sure, I haven't worked on NeuroVault since probably 2016, so I suppose just ping me if you need any help! I'm happy to go with whatever direction y'all decide, and also happy to do work where needed.

[adelavega]

Okay, cool! Well the OpenAPI spec auto generation is going well, and is a good idea independently. I'll try to take a look tomorrow at pyneurovault more closely to asses it.

One idea was to try to take ideas from pyneurovault (esp higher-level API / functions), but rely on autogenerated SDK to minimize upkeep and maintenance on the core of the library.