[Numpy-discussion] A request for new distributions

[Fernando Perez]

Jack Jansen wrote:

> If the whole lapack section of addons was restructured like
> if os.environ.has_key('LINALG_LIB'):
> 	set things up for using that path
> elif os.path.exists('/usr/local/lib/atlas')
> 	use that
> elif os.path.exists('/System/Library/Frameworks/vecLib.framework')
> 	use that
> else
> 	use builtin blas_atlas

If I may ask, it would be great if /usr/lib/(atlas/ATLAS) were added to these 
default search paths, like the scipy setup.py file does.  In a 
mixed-architecture environment, where /usr/local is often NFS shared, one must 
put things like ATLAS in machine-specific locations.  One simple solution is 
to put it directly in /usr/lib/atlas, instead of /usr/local/lib/atlas, since 
/usr/lib is rarely NFS-shared.  This gives a way to share over NFS the bulk of 
things which are built from source, while leaving architecture-specific things 
in a location where they don't cause conflicts.

Numpy and scipy already have this search path, so hopefully numarray can adopt 
the same convention as well.  It's nice to be able to just unpack those and, 
without needing to set absolutely anything, simply say './setup.py bdist_rpm' 
and be done :)

Cheers,

f