[Numpy-discussion] Is numpy ignoring CFLAGS?

[Dr. David Kirkby]

On some 64-bit platforms, which include, but is not limited to:

  * Some version of OS X (I don't know what versions or processors)
  * Solaris on SPARC processors.
  * Solaris on x86 processors.
  * OpenSolaris on SPARC processors.
  * OpenSolaris on x86 processors.
  * HP-UX on PA-RISC processors.

the default is to build 32-bit objects, but 64-bit objects can be created if 
needed. This is usually done via adding the -m64 flag when compiling with GCC or 
SunStudio, though the flag will be different with HP's compiler.

Numpy is used as part of Sage, but it would appear that adding -m64 to CFLAGS 
will not work. A comment in the script used to build numpy shows:

# numpy's distutils is buggy and runs a conftest without
# taking CFLAGS into account. With 64 bit OSX this results
# in *boom*

it then goes on to copy a file called gcc_fake, which is basically a script 
which gets renamed to gcc, but includes the -m64 flag.

We are using numpy-1.3.0.

Is this a known bug? If not, can I submit it to a bug database? Better still, 
does anyone have a patch to resolve it - I hate the idea of making

I've now changed the build method in Sage so it does not only work on OS X, and 
does not hard-code the path to gcc. I have:

if [ "x$SAGE64" = xyes ]; then
    echo "Building a 64-bit version of numpy"
    # HACK ALERT
    # HACK ALERT
    # HACK ALERT
    echo "HACK ALERT - HACK ALERT - HACK ALERT"
    echo "HACK ALERT - HACK ALERT - HACK ALERT"
    echo "HACK ALERT - HACK ALERT - HACK ALERT"
    echo "Creating a sort of fake gcc, which has the -m64 flag"
    echo "#!/usr/bin/env bash" > $SAGE_LOCAL/bin/gcc
    echo "`command -v gcc` -m64 \$@" >> $SAGE_LOCAL/bin/gcc
    chmod 755 $SAGE_LOCAL/bin/gcc
fi

This this file $SAGE_LOCAL/bin/gcc is used to build just numpy. After that, we 
can remove it

if [ "x$SAGE64" = xyes ]; then
    echo "deleting fake gcc"
    rm $SAGE_LOCAL/bin/gcc
fi

and let the normal gcc program be used with an appropriate setting of CFLAGS to 
make other packages build 64-bit.

I know this issue has been known in Sage for a long time (years) but I don't 
know if it was ever reported to the Numpy mailing list or added to any bug database

Dave