[Pkg-octave-devel] Bug#427257: octave2.9: Missing -ff2c compiler flag causes wrong result on amd64

[Ming Hua]

Package: octave2.9
Severity: important

Dear Octave maintainers,

First I must apologize for reporting a bug I can't reproduce.  But if
this is a real bug, it's rather critical (I would have reported it as RC
if I could reproduce), and it may be architecture dependent, so here it
goes:

A user reported to Ubuntu that octave 2.9.9-6 (the source package is
unchanged, just rebuilt for Ubuntu) generates wrong results for complex
matrix multiplication [1].  The discussion on upstream mailing list [2]
confirmed that it's reproducible on Debian as well with 2.9.12 [3].
Both cases are on amd64 system.

1. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/octave2.9/+bug/117517
2. http://www.cae.wisc.edu/pipermail/bug-octave/2007-May/thread.html#2494
3. http://www.cae.wisc.edu/pipermail/bug-octave/2007-May/002498.html

The conclusion on upstream mailing list seems to be that Debian package
is missing the -ff2c flag when using gfortran to compile octave and
linking to g77-compiled BLAS/ATLAS libraries.

As I understand neither octave or Fortran ABI, I am just forwarding this
bug to Debian to raise your attention.  If a Debian maintainer can test
on an amd64 system, it will be greatly appreciated.

Ming
2007.06.02