[Numpy-discussion] Changing the distributed binary for numpy 1.0.4 for windows ?

[David Cournapeau]

On Dec 10, 2007 10:59 PM, Alexander Michael <lxander.m at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 10, 2007 6:48 AM, David Cournapeau <david at ar.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> >     Several people reported problems with numpy 1.0.4 (See #627 and
> > #628, but also other problems mentionned on the ML, which I cannot
> > find). They were all solved, as far as I know, by a binary I produced
> > (simply using mingw + netlib BLAS/LAPACK,  no ATLAS). Maybe it would be
> > good to use those instead ? (I can recompile them if there is a special
> > thing to do to build them)
>
> Do I understand correctly that you are suggesting removing ATLAS from
> the Windows distribution? Wouldn't this make numpy very slow? I know
> on RHEL5 I see a very large improvement between the basic BLAS/LAPACK
> and ATLAS. Perhaps we should make an alternative Windows binary
> available without ATLAS just for those having problems with ATLAS?
If you care about speed, then you should compile your own atlas
anyway. I don't quite understand the discussion about speed:
BLAS/LAPACK is really slower for relatively big sizes, which many
people do not use. And more important, a non working, crashing, fast
BLAS is much slower than a working one :)

We could propose two versions, but that just makes things more
complicated: on average, people using windows are less inclined to try
to understand why things do not work, and when your numpy crashes, it
is not obvious that ATLAS is involved (we still do not know the exact
problem).

David