[Numpy-discussion] A request for new distributions

[Andrew P. Lentvorski, Jr.]

On Jan 7, 2005, at 10:33 AM, Fernando Perez wrote:

> Jack Jansen wrote:
>
>> If the whole lapack section of addons was restructured like
>> if os.environ.has_key('LINALG_LIB'):
>> 	set things up for using that path
>> elif os.path.exists('/usr/local/lib/atlas')
>> 	use that
>> elif os.path.exists('/System/Library/Frameworks/vecLib.framework')
>> 	use that
>> else
>> 	use builtin blas_atlas
>
> If I may ask, it would be great if /usr/lib/(atlas/ATLAS) were added 
> to these default search paths, like the scipy setup.py file does.

I would much rather that previous snippet of code look something like:

if sys.scipypath:  # Or some other flag/global/something
     use whatever is indicated
else:
     if os.environ.has_key('LINALG_LIB'):
	    set things up for using that path
     elif os.path.exists('/usr/local/lib/atlas')
	    use that
     elif os.path.exists('/System/Library/Frameworks/vecLib.framework')
	    use that
     else
	    use builtin blas_atlas

In addition, some of us do not trust anything in /usr for production 
work.  This is to help make our system administrators lives easier.

If I only use things from, say /tools, the sysadmins can completely 
erase and reload workstations for the purposes of bug fixes, security 
updates, etc. without disturbing my work.  This prevents, "GAAAHHH!  
You upgraded the machine and now everything is using Foo_1.1.1 instead 
of Foo_1.1.0 and now everything is broken."

Most Linux distributions are particularly bad about this.

This affliction is also known as "Perl Hell". ;)

-a