[SciPy-user] testing SciPy without ATLAS ;-(

[Pearu Peterson]

On Tue, 28 May 2002, Gerard Vermeulen wrote:

> On Tuesday 28 May 2002 00:02, Pearu Peterson wrote:
<snip>
> > So, what are the suggestions if ATLAS is not available:
> > 1) to require the standard BLAS and the standard LAPACK?
> > 2) or to require the standard LAPACK with the included but incomplete
> > BLAS?
> >
> > I would prefer (1) because linalg claims to have wrappers to the BLAS
> > routines. However, if it is common that distributors provide only
> > incomplete BLAS, we can consider (2) or let users to complain to
> > distributors.
> >
> > What do you think?
> >
> Or fixing up BLAS in the way you suggested masking the "post-update
> LAPACK routine". Maybe getinfo("blas") can peek into BLAS (using nm) to
> see what is available and provide a list of extra fortran sources to
> be compiled and are included with SciPy. If you like I can start to look
> for them, tonight.

Unfortunately it is not that easy. This information is needed already 
in interface_gen.py that generates the *.pyf files. It is always possible
to add additional hooks but I would prefer that these hooks would be
as simple as possible.
Another concern is with win32 platform - is there nm equivalent easily
available?

> So, it boils down to being most user-friendly: meaning (2), but providing all 
> functionality of (1) behind the user's back.
> 
> Maybe, we should inform the LAPACK authors/packagers of the missing blas
> functionality?

I think so too. Please, do that.

Regards,
	Pearu