As a follow up, here's an explanation of how to do this without pip or virtualenv. To do it with virtualenv, just place the wrapper scripts in your virtualenv's bin directory:

To build python:

Install python build dependencies (on Centos 6). Make sure to get the i686 packages:
tk-devel, tcl-devel, libX11-devel, libXau-devel, sqlite-devel, gdbm-devel, readline-devel, zlib-devel, bzip2-devel, openssl-devel, krb5-devel, ncurses-devel, valgrind-devel, valgrind, libxcb-devel, libXft-devel, tk

CFLAGS="-g -O2 -m32" LDFLAGS="-m32 -Wl,-rpath,/opt/python/ia32/

lib" ./configure --enable-unicode=ucs4 --enable-shared --prefix=/opt/python/ia32 --with-valgrind
make
make testall

To build numpy:

Install numpy dependencies:
atlas-devel, lapack-devel, blas-devel, libgfortran

Now you just need to use some compiler wrappers, so the "setup.py build" command will append the -m32 to flag to every call to the compilers. You need to wrap gcc and gfortran, and possibly g++ as well. Place the wrapper scripts and a link to your python executable in a directory, e.g. ~/bin. You could also use virtualenv to make this easier:

cd ~/bin

ln -sfn /opt/python/ia32/bin/python

touch gcc g++ gfortan
chmod u+x gcc g++ gfortran

Now edit the wrapper scripts:

#### gcc ####
#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/gcc -m32 "$@"

#### g++ ####
#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/gcc -m32 "$@"

#### gfotran ####
#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/gfortan -m32 "$@"

Add ~/bin to the front of your path:

export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH

Build numpy:

python setup.py build

On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 1:58 PM, David Jones <david.jones74@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm trying to compile 32-bit numpy on a 64 bit Centos 6 system, but fails with the message:

"Broken toolchain: cannot link a simple C program"

It get's the compile flags right, but not the linker:

C compiler: gcc -pthread -fno-strict-aliasing -g -O2 -m32 -DNDEBUG -g -fwrapv -O3 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -fPIC
compile options: '-Inumpy/core/src/private -Inumpy/core/src -Inumpy/core -Inumpy/core/src/npymath -Inumpy/core/src/multiarray -Inumpy/core/src/umath -Inumpy/core/src/npysort -Inumpy/core/include -I/opt/python/ia32/include/python2.7 -c'
gcc: _configtest.c
gcc -pthread _configtest.o -o _configtest
_configtest.o: could not read symbols: File in wrong format
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

I'm bulding it using a 32bit python build that I compiled on the same system.

I tried:

OPT="-m32" FOPT="-m32" python setup.py build

and

setarch x86_64 -B python setup.py build

But with the same results.

Someone worked around this by altering ccompiler.py, but I'm trying to find a cleaner solution.

See:http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11265057/how-do-i-install-a-32-bit-version-of-numpy

Is there a standard way of doing this?

Regards,
David J.