Review Qibo dependencies

[alecandido]

Starting with #806 we are treating dependencies more carefully, e.g. resolving compatible versions.

In particular, the following dependencies should be reconsidered:

• [ ] tabulate
  • just a pretty printing library
  • not maintained since 2014
  • if needed, consider using rich and its rich.table.Table object
• [ ] cirq
  • used in past for benchmarks and QASM comparison
  • benchmarks: move to qibojit-benchmarks
  • QASM: just apply closure tests, i.e. add a bunch of valid QASM scripts, load and dump, and check that they are equivalent, or just check equivalence at the level of loaded circuit
• [ ] sphinx-markdown-tables
  • not sure where it is used, but this dependency has 27 commits, and it is stale since July 2022 - in case, just use ReStructuredText tables
• [ ] ply
  • not used anywhere https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aqiboteam%2Fqibo%20%2F%5Cbply%2F&type=code
• [x] nlopt
  • another not that big project, consider alternatives
• [ ] matplotlib seems unused in qibo, and only used in the examples
  • src: https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aqiboteam%2Fqibo+%2F%5Cbmatplotlib%2F+path%3Asrc%2F&type=code
  • examples: https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aqiboteam%2Fqibo+%2F%5Cbmatplotlib%2F+path%3Aexamples%2F&type=code
• [ ] psutil is only used to get the CPU count
  • https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aqiboteam%2Fqibo+%2F%5Cbpsutil%2F&type=code
  • it is counting the logical units, which is the default option https://github.com/qiboteam/qibo/blob/1dd73f7a637defd01a42023651f8499652115a7a/src/qibo/backends/tensorflow.py#L200
  • the same could be achieved with multiprocessing.cpu_count() (which is standard library) - it would have not been possible for logical = False, but it is not what it's being used

[scarrazza]

Btw, is sphinx-build missing https://github.com/qiboteam/qibo/actions/runs/4342411482/jobs/7583613358?

[alecandido]

Btw, is sphinx-build missing qiboteam/qibo/actions/runs/4342411482/jobs/7583613358?

Different problem: sphinx-build should be part of the Sphinx package, that is present https://github.com/qiboteam/qibo/blob/341f502fec4c30644f3a23180cf30173b59c8174/pyproject.toml#L37-L38 but in a separate group of dev dependencies.

We should specify them in the workflow extras, as done in the other two workflows: https://github.com/qiboteam/qibo/blob/341f502fec4c30644f3a23180cf30173b59c8174/.github/workflows/rules.yml#L23

[scarrazza]

@AleCandido I believe we have solved half of your points, could you please update the list?

[alecandido]

@AleCandido I believe we have solved half of your points, could you please update the list?

I only see one removed, and I ticked as done in the OP. The others seem to be still there as before:

• https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aqiboteam%2Fqibo+%2F%5Cbsphinx-markdown-tables%2F&type=code
  • this one is only in the deps, but I haven't tested without, so I don't know if it has side-effects (e.g. being used by Sphinx implicitly)
• https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aqiboteam%2Fqibo+%2F%5Cbcirq%2F&type=code
• https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aqiboteam%2Fqibo%20%2F\btabulate%2F&type=code
• https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aqiboteam%2Fqibo%20%2F%5Cbply%2F&type=code
  • this is only in the deps, but it was also originally, so nothing changed

[scarrazza]

Thanks.