This is the prototype implementation of the variable-width UTF-8 string DType described in NEP 55.

See the NEP for implementation details and usage examples. See numpy.dtypes.StringDType for the version that made it into NumPy.

Ensure Meson and NumPy are installed in the python environment you would like to use:

$ python3 -m pip install meson meson-python

It is important to have the latest development version of numpy installed. Nightly wheels work well for this purpose, and can be installed easily:

$ pip install -i https://pypi.anaconda.org/scientific-python-nightly-wheels/simple numpy

You can install with pip directly, taking care to disable build isolation so the numpy nightly gets picked up at build time:

$ pip install -v . --no-build-isolation

If you want to work on the stringdtype code, you can build with meson, create a wheel, and install it.

$ rm -r dist/
$ meson build
$ python -m build --wheel -Cbuilddir=build
$ python -m pip install dist/path-to-wheel-file.whl