From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu Sat Feb 5 14:28:44 2000 Subject: Re: ATLAS and octave From: R Clint Whaley To: stevenj at alum dot mit dot edu Cc: help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 15:28:39 -0500 Steven, Thanks for the comments. I've read several of your fftw papers; fftw was the first empiricaly optimized library I heard about, kind of the grandfather of these kinds of projects . . . >> The most direct method is, with a previously installed ATLAS, build >> octave's libcruft as normal, but you then ar into it the contents of: >> ATLAS/lib//liblapack.a (overwriting some LAPACK routines) >> ATLAS/lib//libatlas.a (ATLAS internals) >> ATLAS/lib//libf77blas.a (F77 BLAS interface -- overwrite BLAS) >> ATLAS/lib//libcblas.a (C BLAS interface) > >This doesn't seem like the right thing for a permanent solution--too much >manual hacking of the build process. The right thing would be to modify >the configure.in file so that the configure script checked for these >libraries, e.g. > > AC_CHECK_LIB(atlas, ATL_xerbla) I was trying to get across the mechanics of the operation; my feeling is that not being an octave maintainer, I don't have much insight into how to best do this in octave. I certainly wasn't indicating that my 6AM hack was the key to success . . . >One problem may be that ATLAS calls its replacement for LAPACK routines >"liblapack.a", which is also what one would normally call the real LAPACK >library. Since you don't provide a replacement for all of LAPACK, you >should probably call it libatlaslapack.a or something like that, so that >one can conveniently link with both libraries. ATLAS's liblapack.a was actually designed to be archived directly into netlib's lapack.a, overwriting several of LAPACK's routines, and thus providing a complete lapack library. This process is covered in ATLAS/doc/LAPACK.txt if anyone is interested. Again, a bit of a kludge, but it gives a full library in this way . . . >Autoconf works well even for this sort of thing; e.g. we do it for FFTW Thanks for the info. Cheers, Clint ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL. Octave's home on the web: http://www.che.wisc.edu/octave/octave.html How to fund new projects: http://www.che.wisc.edu/octave/funding.html Subscription information: http://www.che.wisc.edu/octave/archive.html -----------------------------------------------------------------------