[SciPy-dev] Progress with Intel Fortran Compiler support

[Pearu Peterson]

Hi,

It took a whole weekend to get Scipy working with the Intel compiler.
Now all scipy tests pass (except test_shapiro) also with ifc.

However, few functions from special.cephes still cause python to
crash (see test methods starting with _check).
I'll get back to it later when special  module has more tests that
actually test the correctness cephes functions results. Currently when
cephes functions (built with gcc) return results then I am not always
sure that they are correct, in same cases I have even been unable to call
these functions without getting domain errors (see test methods starting 
with __check).

Anyway, guide lines how to build scipy with ifc can be found in
INSTALL.txt. Unfortunately, the building process is not as straightforward
as one would wish:
1) there is binary incompability between ifc and g77 generated codes so
that ATLAS and LAPACK libraries *must* be compiled with ifc.
2) in some cases ifc optimization is too good so that LAPACK
functions ?lamch fail for that; see INSTALL.txt for a workaround.

Finally, Intel Fortran Compiler 5.0 is not supported because scipy build 
fails with internal compiler error when debugging flags are enabled.

Regards,	
	Pearu