Combine ATLAS and LAPACK?

[Volker Braun]

The newest development version atlas-3.9.32 now wants to build lapack itself and the old --with-netlib-lapack configure option is gone. According to the documentation, atlas can now automatically tune some lapack routines in addition to blas. From that perspective it makes sense that both need to be compiled together. But Sage currently ships separate lapack and atlas spkgs. I guess the options are 

1) somehow figure out how to separate atlas and lapack. That seems to be on collision course with where atlas is heading...

2) include lapack in the atlas spkg (versioned by lapack)

3) include atlas in the lapack spkg (versioned by atlas)

4) make a combined package that increases in version whenever atlas or lapack gets updated. For example, linear-algebra-n.spkg where n always increases by one...

Any thoughts? I've tentatively implemented option 2) in http://www.stp.dias.ie/~vbraun/Sage/spkg/atlas-3.9.32.spkg which compiles fine on F14 x86_64. The build process is definitely made simpler by including the lapack sources! But I secretly think that option 4) would be  best. Any thoughts?

[Francois Bissey]

..........

Does the new ATLAS includes lapack sources? Traditionaly, you needed to
build lapack first against a regular libf77blas, install ATLAS then ATLAS
would replace a select few routine from liblapack.a by updating with ar.
I am all in favor of a direct build against ATLAS from the start.

I had given a lot of thought myself on the organization of BLAS/LAPACK/ATLAS
in sage and I think we should drop the BLAS reference stuff and do ATLAS/LAPACK
in just the one spkg as well. So your proposal makes total sense to me, even if
we have to include lapack source in there ourselves.

Francois

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[Volker Braun]

The new atlas does not include lapack sources, but you have to tell its configure script where the (netlib lapack) sources are if you want a lapack library.... I agree with you that the old system of hacking the already-built lapack library into atlas was a bit of a mess.

[Dima Pasechnik]

GotoBlas2 installation downloads lapack sources off the net, from the
standard netlib location

[Volker Braun]

That would of course violate the rule that spkgs must install without internet connection...