[Python-modules-team] Bug#464784: python-numpy please transition to gfortran/libblas-dev/lapack-dev

[Ondrej Certik]

On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 12:44 PM, David Cournapeau
<david at ar.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>     Following a comment done on numpy bug tracking system (ticket #667):
>  dotblas uses the CBLAS API, and as such needs CBLAS; CBLAS functions
>  (cblas_*) are simply not provided by BLAS. They are provided by ATLAS,
>  though. So you cannot build dotblas with the netlib BLAS package (the
>  one used in refblas3).
>     This explains why numpy is 'picky' about ATLAS, more than other
>  packages: numpy does not only use the F77 interface, but also the
>  "official" C interface (I guess, but I am not sure, that the point is to
>  have a fast multiplication available for numpy even if no fortran
>  compiler is available on the building machine).
>     To be able to replace libraries at runtime for a numpy built with
>  ATLAS, you would need a libcblas, which is not available in debian
>  AFAIK. So there is really no way around it: you have to wait for atlas,
>  and built against it.

Thanks David for the explanation.

So I am not going to do anything for this bug. However, if anyone
knows what to do, please
let us know. Feel free to discuss it on the debian-python mailinglist
and then fix the package in our svn.

Thanks,
Ondrej