[Numpy-discussion] Failing to build numpy properly on Ubuntu Hardy

[David Cournapeau]

Grissiom wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 06:10, Gael Varoquaux
> <gael.varoquaux at normalesup.org <mailto:gael.varoquaux at normalesup.org>>
> wrote:
>
>     Hi all,
>
>     Looks like I am following the long line of people failing to build
>     numpy
>     :). I must admit I am clueless with building problems.
>
>     Numpy builds alright, but I get:
>
>     ImportError: /usr/lib/sse2/atlas/libblas.so.3gf: undefined symbol:
>     _gfortran_st_write_done
>
>     On import.
>
>     This used to work a while ago. I am not sure what I changed, but
>     it sure
>     does fail. I really don't understand where the gfortran comes in.
>     I tried
>     building numpy with or without gfortran. From what I gather it is the
>     numpy is being built by a different compiler than the atlas libraries
>     (hurray for ABI compatibility), but I don't really understand how
>     this is
>     possible.
>
>     How can I debug this?
>
>     Cheers,
>
>     Gaël
>
>  
> I have encountered with such problem before. My solution is recompile
> the problem package(maybe atlas in your case) with -ff2c option passed
> to gfortran.

This is a bad idea: it won't work with libraries which are not built
with this option, and the error won't always be easy to detect (one key
difference is that wo ff2c, complex variables are passed by value by
gfortran, whereas they are passed by reference with the ff2c option -
which means crash and/or corruption).

http://wiki.debian.org/GfortranTransition

The only viable solution is to avoid mixing g77-built and gfortran-built
libraries (there is now a simple test which tries to detect those mix in
both numpy and scipy),

cheers,

David