[Deb-scipy-devel] 2 questions about numpy (ubuntu, Atlas)

[Ed Schofield]

David Cournapeau wrote:
> Hi there,
>
>    A recent convert to numpy/scipy, and a user of ubuntu and debian, I
> am interested in the development of debian and ubuntu packages of
> numpy/scipy and related packages.
>    I have two questions:
>
>    - first, why the conflict with atlas ? I am building my numpy/scipy
> packages with atlas without any problems, and I thought that atlas3
> would give the best with respect to speed ?

I also think the build-conflict with ATLAS is unnecessary.  José, I
think the build works fine with atlas3 provided the relevant atlas3-dev
packages (e.g. atlas3-base-dev) are installed.  These provide the
symlinks (such as libatlas.so, libcblas.so, and libf77blas.so) that
NumPy is looking for.

So we probably want something like:

Build-Depends: ..., refblas3-dev | atlas3-base-dev, lapack3-dev |
atlas3-base-dev, ...

This is the way Octave is set up (see
http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/o/octave2.9/octave2.9_2.9.6-3.diff.gz). 
I'll test it for NumPy as soon as my shiny new Sid box is ready and post
the results ...


>    - I hope this is appropriate, but I was wondering about the work
> for ubuntu. Reading the archive, it looks like there would be a new
> policy for python on debian, and this new policy won't be available in
> dapper (python-all is only available in edgy, the development version
> of ubuntu). I did a dirty hack, that is taking the last available
> numpy debian using the old policy, and adaptating it for ubuntu (it
> works, though, building + import numpy, numpy.test() succeeding). What
> would be the best method for Ubuntu (if questions regarding ubuntu are
> not appropriate, please telle me).

Well, Andrew Straw has unofficial Ubuntu packages, as you know.  And
Edgy has recently been synchronized with Debian unstable ...

And FWIW it seems Dapper does have python-all, but no python-central ...


-- Ed