[SciPy-dev] Building numpy/scipy on RHEL5 OR CentOS5

[David Cournapeau]

Michael Hearne wrote:
> I've been wrestling with installing scipy (in any form - binary, source, 
> egg, rpm) on some RHEL5 machines that I am compelled to work with, and 
> have failed miserably.   I noticed a thread a few months back about 
> building scipy on CentOS 5, and noticed that at least one of the 
> respondents indicated he'd had success.  As I understand it, CentOS 
> strives for binary compatibility with RHEL, so I'm hopeful that CentOS 
> solutions will work for me.
>
> Does anyone have (in order of preference):
> 1) A CentOS/RHEL5 yum repository for scipy/numpy/(optionally matplotlib)
> 2) CentOS/RHEL5 RPM's for scipy/numpy/(optionally matplotlib)
> 3) A set of instructions for building scipy from source on either of 
> these platforms?
>
> I'm getting a little desperate here - this is likely one of the  most 
> difficult installs I've ever had to deal with.
>   
Hi Michael,

If you don't tell us more, we won't be able to help you much. Installing
numpy/scipy themselves is easy; their dependencies (BLAS/LAPACK) are
not. One problem I have with CENTOS/RHEL, contrary to most other
distributions, is the difficult to get an up-to-date list of available
packages. Would you know where to find it ?

Your two options are building from sources or binary packages:
    - from sources: you need BLAS/LAPACK, and make sure the same fortran
compiler is used for everything (g77 or gfortran; gfortran is best for
RHEL5, because that's the default one I believe).
    - from rpm: you could try ashigabou repositories

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/ashigabou/CentOS_5/

If it does not work, please let me know (I am the one who build the
packages, and will fix any problems with them).

cheers,

David