[Numpy-discussion] Installation info

[David Cournapeau]

Hanni Ali wrote:
>  
> Yes I had used the internal versions in the mean time, but I do want 
> to try to use the intel fortran compiler in all likelyhood.

Yes, people can try to build as they want, that's the beauty of open 
source :) But for official distribution, I don't want to depend on non 
free software (outside windows, obviously). I need a process to build 
numpy in a reproducible and in a hassle way (well, as much as possible, 
at least).

>  
> Python 2.6 is compiled with vs 2008 is is important that numpy is also 
> compiled with the same compiler or not. The fact that a fortran 
> compiler is necessary makes me think no?

This has nothing to do with fortran per se, but with the fact that MS 
keeps breaking the standard C runtime. Hopefully, with python 3, this 
may not be an issue anymore (python on windows won't use the standard C 
API, but windows API instead, because MS guarantees ABI in this case, at 
least that's what I understood).

The fortran compiler has to be the same to build everything, but python 
does not use any fortran, so you can choose whatever you want as long as 
you use it for everything (BLAS, LAPACK and numpy).

>  
> It looks like I'm going to look at 2.6 now due to dependencies on 
> pywin32 as well.
>  
> Also is it important that BLAS/LAPACK are compiled with the same 
> compiler as python or not?

BLAS/LAPACK is built with fortran, and python with C compiler, so no :) 
What may be important is the C++ compiler to build (more exactly to 
link) python if you build python by yourself, but I don't know how this 
works on windows. I just build softwares for windows, I don't use it.

cheers,

David