[SciPy-dev] SciPy 0.4.4 release progress

[Ed Schofield]

On 08/01/2006, at 4:11 AM, Travis Oliphant wrote:

> This is what I do (check this set of instructions for errors, it's off
> the top of my head).
>
> ...

Hi Travis,
Thanks for the tips!  They were very helpful, and I'm getting there.   
I still have some questions:

1. I uninstalled Python 2.4 and installed Python 2.3, figuring that  
SciPy binaries built against Python 2.3 would be upwardly compatible,  
but perhaps not vice versa.  Is this true?  I noticed you built  
separate binaries for NumPy for Python 2.3 and 2.4 on Windows but  
just one set on Linux -- why?

2. I've been getting various LAPACK errors since I moved away my  
custom-rolled ATLAS/LAPACK libraries, but things are looking better  
now.  I presume that the Linux binaries should be built without an  
ATLAS dependency?  If I link against /ed's/own/atlas/library.so, the  
binaries will be useless to anyone but me, right?  ...

It makes me wonder if we need Linux binaries at all.  I've noticed  
that numarray only distributes Windows binaries, probably since the  
source tarball is generally far more useful, and because Linux  
distributors will soon package SciPy themselves anyway.  Could we do  
this too?

3. Are there any Windows linking traps to be aware of?  I presume we  
link SciPy against an ATLAS DLL that gets rolled up into the .exe  
file ...

----------

Just out of interest, it seems Mandrake 10 ships with an incomplete  
LAPACK (4.3 MB, rather than Debian's 5.3 MB), with various missing  
symbols.  Why do they *do* this?!  And the NumPy / SciPy setup  
scripts are really very smart -- good job, guys!  Witness this:

atlas_blas_info:
   FOUND:
     libraries = ['f77blas', 'cblas', 'atlas']
     library_dirs = ['/home/schofield/Tools/lib/atlas_moved_away']
     language = c

Doh! ;)


-- Ed