Added max_buffer_size to ensure_contiguous_ndarray.

Reverted earlier changes to the ABC layer as converting to ndarray and
checking buffer size seems pointless and inefficient.

Author: jeromekelleher

numcodecs/abc.py

@@ -30,7 +30,6 @@
 
 """
 from __future__ import absolute_import, print_function, division
-from numcodecs.compat import ensure_ndarray
 
 
 class Codec(object):
@@ -40,18 +39,6 @@ class Codec(object):
     codec_id = None
     """Codec identifier."""
 
-    # 2GiB limit by default. Codecs can override this in subclasses if larger
-    # buffers are supported.
-    max_buffer_size = 2**31 - 1
-    """Maximum size of a buffer that can be encoded or decoded."""
-
-    def _check_buffer_size(self, buf):
-        bufsize = ensure_ndarray(buf).nbytes
-        if bufsize > self.max_buffer_size:
-            msg = "{} codec does not support buffers of > {} bytes".format(
-                self.codec_id, self.max_buffer_size)
-            raise ValueError(msg)
-
     def encode(self, buf):  # pragma: no cover
         """Encode data in `buf`.