[Numpy-discussion] Blas / lapack / binary installers...

[Matthew Brett]

Hello,

Summary: is it possible to distribute, optionally or not, the blas /
lapack libraries that numpy is built against, with the numpy binary
installers?

We at the NIPY project have run into what seems like a recurring
problem; we want to build our code against both numpy and lapack, on
windows, linux and OS X.

No problem of course if we've done a development install - we already
needed to have blas/lapack.

For a binary install, we've got a nasty problem, especially on
windows.  Of course, on windows, numpy.distutils dreams that there
will be libraries still in the installed location for the builder's
machine - I think by default at C:\local\lib\yop\sse3.  So, to make -
say - NIPY - build, we need to:

1) Download some binary blas/lapack libraries, hoping they match our
compiler, for example from links here (for windows):

http://www.scipy.org/Installing_SciPy/Windows

2) EITHER: make our own site.cfg specifying the library location and
library files, and copy this same site.cfg to any other package we're
building against numpy / lapack, OR: edit the site.cfg in the
installed package distribution to point to these new libraries.

So, I'm wondering, would it be beyond sense to:

Proposal
-------------
Make the binary installers for windows with the option to put the
blas/lapack libraries in some predictable location and adapt the
site.cfg file accordingly.

Is it possible this would also make compiling scipy on windows a whole
lot easier?

Thanks a lot,

Matthew