Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2011 11:18:58 +0000 From: Anton Shterenlikht <mexas@bristol.ac.uk> To: Konstantin Tokarev <annulen@yandex.ru> Cc: Anton Shterenlikht <mexas@bristol.ac.uk>, freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: policy on having the same routines in different library archives? Message-ID: <20110202111857.GA58885@mech-cluster241.men.bris.ac.uk> In-Reply-To: <335051296642710@web20.yandex.ru> References: <20110202102816.GA58343@mech-cluster241.men.bris.ac.uk> <335051296642710@web20.yandex.ru>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Wed, Feb 02, 2011 at 01:31:50PM +0300, Konstantin Tokarev wrote: > > > 02.02.2011, 13:28, "Anton Shterenlikht" <mexas@bristol.ac.uk>: > > I've put a port of Slatec together: > > http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=ports/151970 > > > > Recently I realised that some 110 routines in Slatec > > are already present in math/blas, and the Blas versions > > seem to be newer. > > > > % ar -t /usr/local/lib/libblas.a | sort > blas.sorted > > % ar -t /usr/local/lib/libslatec.a | sort > slatec.sorted > > % comm -12 blas.sorted slatec.sorted | wc > > ?????110 ????110 ????882 > > % > > > > I can see benefits and disadvantages of having same > > routines in different libraries. Advantages are > > that a user can choose to only install Slatec, > > with no Blas, and that no fine tuning of the > > distribution is required. > > Disadvantages could be extra size and potential > > for confusion, e.g. when linking against both > > libraries. > > > > Is there a FreeBSD ports policy on this? > > FYI: there are lots of BLAS implementations in the world, all of them having the same API. > The same for LAPACK. Yes, I know this. So how this affects what is (or should) be available from the ports tree? I understand there is a general desire to keep the ports tree consistent and to avoid redundancy. In addition there's clear hierarchy of numerical libraries: % grep -c blas INDEX-9 283 % grep -c lapack INDEX-9 257 % grep -c arpack INDEX-9 89 % grep -c scalapack INDEX-9 3 % grep -c linpack INDEX-9 2 % grep -c eispack INDEX-9 1 Presumably it makes little sense having doubles of math/blas routines in other ports, given that math/blas is used by so many ports already. My point is that perhaps the policy should be (if there isn't one at present) that we shouldn't have repeated entries in less popular archive libraries, unless they are substantially different? I realise that fortran numerical libraries will not interest many, so perhaps this is irrelevant anyway.. -- Anton Shterenlikht Room 2.6, Queen's Building Mech Eng Dept Bristol University University Walk, Bristol BS8 1TR, UK Tel: +44 (0)117 331 5944 Fax: +44 (0)117 929 4423
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20110202111857.GA58885>