[Numpy-discussion] Binary releases

[William Ray Wing]

On Sep 16, 2013, at 1:54 PM, Pauli Virtanen <pav at iki.fi> wrote:

> 16.09.2013 16:31, William Ray Wing kirjoitti:
> [clip]
>> If you will forgive an observation from a Mac user and (amateur) developer.
>> I have twice tried to build Numpy from source and both times failed.
>> The problem was that I couldn't find a single comprehensive set of
>> directions that started from a virgin system (nothing but
>> Apple's python and Xcode) and proceed to working copies of
>> Numpy (and of course Matplotlib).
> 
> The problem with OSX is that as a software development platform with
> open source tools, it is simply immature. You have homebrew, macports,
> fink, python.org binaries, Apple's own Python installation, proprietary
> BLAS/LAPACK with its own quirks, unified multiarch binaries, and whatnot
> in the mix. This makes everything more complicated to support,
> especially as the situation evolves with time and "recipes" that once
> worked stop working.
> 
> -- 
> Pauli Virtanen
> 

I think I could make a good case that maintaining a recipe is a lot less work than maintaining a binary distribution.  Doing the second implicitly requires doing the first anyway.

Thanks,
Bill