INSTALL.txt

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Building and installing NumPy
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

:Authors: Numpy Developers <numpy-discussion@scipy.org>
:Discussions to: numpy-discussion@scipy.org

.. Contents::

PREREQUISITES
=============

Building NumPy requires the following software installed:

1) Python__ 2.4.x or newer

   On Debian and derivative (Ubuntu): python python-dev

   On Windows: the official python installer on Python__ is enough

   Make sure that the Python package distutils is installed before
   continuing. For example, in Debian GNU/Linux, distutils is included
   in the python-dev package.

   Python must also be compiled with the zlib module enabled.

2) nose__ (optional) 0.10.3 or later

   This is required for testing numpy, but not for using it.

Python__ http://www.python.org
nose__ http://somethingaboutorange.com/mrl/projects/nose/

Fortran ABI mismatch
====================

The two most popular open source fortran compilers are g77 and gfortran.
Unfortunately, they are not ABI compatible, which means that concretely you
should avoid mixing libraries built with one with another. In particular, if
your blas/lapack/atlas is built with g77, you *must* use g77 when building
numpy and scipy; on the contrary, if your atlas is built with gfortran, you
*must* build numpy/scipy with gfortran.

Choosing the fortran compiler
-----------------------------

To build with g77:

    python setup.py build --fcompiler=gnu

To build with gfortran:

    python setup.py build --fcompiler=gnu95

How to check the ABI of blas/lapack/atlas
-----------------------------------------

One relatively simple and reliable way to check for the compiler used to build
a library is to use ldd on the library. If libg2c.so is a dependency, this
means that g77 has been used. If libgfortran.so is a dependency, gfortran has
been used. If both are dependencies, this means both have been used, which is
almost always a very bad idea.

Building with ATLAS support
===========================

Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid)
----------------------

You can install the necessary packages for optimized ATLAS with this command:

    sudo apt-get install libatlas-base-dev

If you have a recent CPU with SIMD support (SSE, SSE2, etc...), you should
also install the corresponding package for optimal performance. For example,
for SSE2:

    sudo apt-get install libatlas3gf-sse2

*NOTE*: if you build your own atlas, Intrepid changed its default fortran
compiler to gfortran. So you should rebuild everything from scratch, including
lapack, to use it on Intrepid.

Ubuntu 8.04 and lower
---------------------

You can install the necessary packages for optimized ATLAS with this command:

    sudo apt-get install atlas3-base-dev

If you have a recent CPU with SIMD support (SSE, SSE2, etc...), you should
also install the corresponding package for optimal performance. For example,
for SSE2:

    sudo apt-get install atlas3-sse2

Windows 64 bits notes
=====================

Note: only AMD64 is supported (IA64 is not) - AMD64 is the version most people
want.

Free compilers (mingw-w64)
--------------------------

http://mingw-w64.sourceforge.net/

To use the free compilers (mingw-w64), you need to build your own toolchain, as
the mingw project only distribute cross-compilers (cross-compilation is not
supported by numpy). Since this toolchain is still being worked on, serious
compiler bugs can be expected.  binutil 2.19 + gcc 4.3.3 + mingw-w64 runtime
gives you a working C compiler (but the C++ is broken). gcc 4.4 will hopefully
be able to run natively.

This is the only tested way to get a numpy with a FULL blas/lapack (scipy does
not work because of C++).

MS compilers
------------

If you are familiar with MS tools, that's obviously the easiest path, and the
compilers are hopefully more mature (although in my experience, they are quite
fragile, and often segfault on invalid C code). The main drawback is that no
fortran compiler + MS compiler combination has been tested - mingw-w64 gfortran
+ MS compiler does not work at all (it is unclear whether it ever will).

For python 2.5, you need VS 2005 (MS compiler version 14) targeting
AMD64 bits, or the Platform SDK v6.0 or below (which gives command
line versions of 64 bits target compilers). The PSDK is free.

For python 2.6, you need VS 2008. The freely available version does not
contains 64 bits compilers (you also need the PSDK, v6.1).

It is *crucial* to use the right version: python 2.5 -> version 14, python 2.6,
version 15. You can check the compiler version with cl.exe /?. Note also that
for python 2.5, 64 bits and 32 bits versions use a different compiler version.