[Numpy-discussion] Dropping support for Accelerate

[Matthew Brett]

Hi,

On Sun, Jul 23, 2017 at 5:07 PM, Ilhan Polat <ilhanpolat at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ouch, that's from 2012 :(  I'll add this thread as a reference to the wiki
> list.
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 23, 2017 at 5:22 PM, Nathan Goldbaum <nathan12343 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> See
>> https://mail.scipy.org/pipermail/numpy-discussion/2012-August/063589.html
>> and replies in that thread.
>>
>> Quote from an Apple engineer in that thread:
>>
>> "For API outside of POSIX, including GCD and technologies like Accelerate,
>> we do not support usage on both sides of a fork(). For this reason among
>> others, use of fork() without exec is discouraged in general in processes
>> that use layers above POSIX."
>>
>> On Sun, Jul 23, 2017 at 10:16 AM, Ilhan Polat <ilhanpolat at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> That's probably because I know nothing about the issue, is there any
>>> reference I can read about?
>>>
>>> But in general, please feel free populate new items in the wiki page.
>>>
>>> On Sun, Jul 23, 2017 at 11:15 AM, Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I've been wishing we'd stop shipping Accelerate for years, because of
>>>> how it breaks multiprocessing – that doesn't seem to be on your list
>>>> yet.
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Jul 22, 2017 at 3:50 AM, Ilhan Polat <ilhanpolat at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> > A few months ago, I had the innocent intention to wrap LDLt
>>>> > decomposition
>>>> > routines of LAPACK into SciPy but then I am made aware that the
>>>> > minimum
>>>> > required version of LAPACK/BLAS was due to Accelerate framework. Since
>>>> > then
>>>> > I've been following the core SciPy team and others' discussion on this
>>>> > issue.
>>>> >
>>>> > We have been exchanging opinions for quite a while now within various
>>>> > SciPy
>>>> > issues and PRs about the ever-increasing Accelerate-related issues and
>>>> > I've
>>>> > compiled a brief summary about the ongoing discussions to reduce the
>>>> > clutter.
>>>> >
>>>> > First, I would like to kindly invite everyone to contribute and
>>>> > sharpen the
>>>> > cases presented here
>>>> >
>>>> > https://github.com/scipy/scipy/wiki/Dropping-support-for-Accelerate
>>>> >
>>>> > The reason I specifically wanted to post this also in NumPy mailing
>>>> > list is
>>>> > to probe for the situation from the NumPy-Accelerate perspective. Is
>>>> > there
>>>> > any NumPy specific problem that would indirectly effect SciPy should
>>>> > the
>>>> > support for Accelerate is dropped?
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > _______________________________________________
>>>> > NumPy-Discussion mailing list
>>>> > NumPy-Discussion at python.org
>>>> > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Nathaniel J. Smith -- https://vorpus.org
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> NumPy-Discussion mailing list
>>>> NumPy-Discussion at python.org
>>>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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I added some more discussion, and some links to previous discussion on
the mailing list.

I also pointed to this PR :
https://github.com/MacPython/numpy-wheels/pull/1 - which builds
OpenBLAS wheels for numpy.  The same kind of thing would work fine for
Scipy.

Cheers,

Matthew