[Distutils] What does it mean for Python to "bundle pip"?

[Chris Barker - NOAA Federal]

On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 6:52 AM, Oscar Benjamin
<oscar.j.benjamin at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm pretty sure the current Windows installer just doesn't bother with
> BLAS/LAPACK libraries. Maybe it will become possible to expose them
> via a separate wheel-distributed PyPI name one day.

Well, the rule of thumb with Windows binaries is that you bundle in
(usually via static linking) all the libs you need -- numpy could have
a semi-optimized LAPACK or not, and the user shouldn't know the
difference at install time. But the trick in this case is that numpy
is used by itself, but also widely used with external C and Fortran
that might want LAPACK. (including scipy, in fact...)

But maybe this is all too much to bite off for pip and wheels. If we
could get to a state where "pip install numpy" and "pip install scipy"
would do something reasonable, if not optimized, I think that would be
great! And it's really not a big deal to say:

If you want an optimized LAPACK, etc.  for your system, you need to do
something special/ by hand/ etc...

"something special" may be as simple as "download
numpy_optimized_just_for_this_machine.whl and install it with pip.

All that being said -- OS-X has a moderately complex binary set, what
with universal binaries, so maybe we can have a bit more meta-data
about the architecture supported.

-Chris


-- 

Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
Oceanographer

Emergency Response Division
NOAA/NOS/OR&R            (206) 526-6959   voice
7600 Sand Point Way NE   (206) 526-6329   fax
Seattle, WA  98115       (206) 526-6317   main reception

Chris.Barker at noaa.gov