[Numpy-discussion] Numpy 1.3.0 rc1 OS X Installer

[David Cournapeau]

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 2:10 AM, Chris Barker <Chris.Barker at noaa.gov> wrote:
> David Cournapeau wrote:
>> I don't really care, as long as there is only one. Maintaining binaries
>> for every python out there is too time consuming. Given that mac os X
>> is the easiest platform to build numpy/scipy on,
>
> I assume you meant NOT the easiest? ;-)

Actually, no, I meant it :) It has gcc, which is the best supported
compiler by numpy and scipy, there is almost no problem with g77, and
the optimized blas/lapack is provided by the OS vendor, meaning on ABI
issue, weird atlas build errors, etc... It is almost impossible to get
the build wrong on mac os x once you get the right fortran compiler.


>
> In theory, yes, and in practice, it seems to be working for wxPython.
> However, I agree that it's a bit risky. I'm at the PyCon MacPython
> sprint as we type -- and apparently Apple's is linked with the 10.5 sdk,
> whereas python.org's is linked against the 10.3 sdk -- so there could be
>  issues.

I am almost certain there are issues in some configurations, in
particular x86_64. I don't know the details, but I have seen mentioned
several time this kind of problems:

http://osdir.com/ml/python-dev/2009-02/msg00339.html

I can see how this could cause trouble.

>
>> I will thus build binaries
>> against python.org binaries (I still have to find a way to guarantee
>> this in the build script, but that should not be too difficult).
>
> Hardcoding the path to python should work:
>
> PYTHON=/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/bin/python

Well, yes, but you can't really control this in the bdist_mpkg
command. Also, my current paver file uses virtualenv to build a
isolated numpy - that's what breaks the .mpkg, but I like this
approach for building, so I would like to keep it as much as possible.

> well, I guess that's the promise of easy_install -- but someone would
> have to build all the binary eggs... and there were weird issues with
> universal eggs on the mac that I understand have been fixed in 2.6, but
> not 2.5

There are numerous problems with eggs (or more precisely, with "easy"
install), which I am just not interested in getting into. In
particular, it often breaks the user system - fixing it is easy for
developers/"power users", but is a PITA for normal users. As long as
easy_install is broken, I don't want to use it.

cheers,

David