Installing ATLAS and LAPACK
The following is a first attempt to almost create a shell script for installation of ATLAS and LAPACK. It does not work right now and it is specific to a particular platform. It is posted here to archive it and throw into the public domain, maybe others will find it useful. It is at least a documentation of some relevant notes on the procedure. Corrections and updates would be really appreciated. Alternatives to automate this process also welcome, but not rpm (unless it can be demonstrated that an rpm installation achieves an equivalent optimized blas to a full compilation). Also, advice about integrating this with compilation of python and numeric python libraries much appreciated too, particularly the definition of some commonly accepted paths for the library installation, so that all python compilation can link the libraries without having to modify their configure scripts. ### For background about creating and using libraries with linux, see http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/libtool.html http://www.dwheeler.com/program-library http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Program-Library-HOWTO.html http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/html_single/Program-Library-HOWTO.html "In theory, code in static ELF libraries that is linked into an executable should run slightly faster (by 1-5%) than a shared library or a dynamically loaded library, but in practice this rarely seems to be the case due to other confounding factors." Locations for installation (from Program-Library-HOWTO): 3.1.2. Filesystem Placement Shared libraries must be placed somewhere in the filesystem. Most open source software tends to follow the GNU standards; for more information see the info file documentation at info:standards#Directory_Variables. The GNU standards recommend installing by default all libraries in /usr/local/lib when distributing source code (and all commands should go into /usr/local/bin). They also define the convention for overriding these defaults and for invoking the installation routines. The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) discusses what should go where in a distribution (see http://www.pathname.com/fhs). According to the FHS, most libraries should be installed in /usr/lib, but libraries required for startup should be in /lib and libraries that are not part of the system should be in /usr/local/lib. There isn't really a conflict between these two documents; the GNU standards recommend the default for developers of source code, while the FHS recommends the default for distributors (who selectively override the source code defaults, usually via the system's package management system). In practice this works nicely: the ``latest'' (possibly buggy!) source code that you download automatically installs itself in the ``local'' directory (/usr/local), and once that code has matured the package managers can trivially override the default to place the code in the standard place for distributions. Note that if your library calls programs that can only be called via libraries, you should place those programs in /usr/local/libexec (which becomes /usr/libexec in a distribution). One complication is that Red Hat-derived systems don't include /usr/local/lib by default in their search for libraries; see the discussion below about /etc/ld.so.conf. Other standard library locations include /usr/X11R6/lib for X-windows. Note that /lib/security is used for PAM modules, but those are usually loaded as DL libraries (also discussed below). ... 3.2. How Libraries are Used ... The list of directories to be searched is stored in the file /etc/ld.so.conf. Many Red Hat-derived distributions don't normally include /usr/local/lib in the file /etc/ld.so.conf. I consider this a bug, and adding /usr/local/lib to /etc/ld.so.conf is a common ``fix'' required to run many programs on Red Hat-derived systems. ### # A. ATLAS INSTALLATION 1. download and extract ATLAS source, eg cd /usr/local/src/ tar zxvf atlas3.6.0.tar.gz cd ATLAS #2. follow the INSTALL.txt instructions to build it and test ATLAS ./configure make #3. if successful, copy atlas files into common system locations, eg mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/atlas cp lib/Linux_P4SSE2/* /usr/local/lib/atlas/ chmod +x /usr/local/lib/atlas/lib* mkdir -p /usr/local/include/atlas cp include/Linux_P4SSE2/* /usr/local/include/atlas/ ### # B. LAPACK INSTALLATION # #1. download and extract LAPACK source cd /usr/local/src/ tar zxvf lapack.tgz cd LAPACK #2. make LAPACK with all defaults cp INSTALL/make.inc.$PLATFORM make.inc make #(On my fedora core 3 system, the timing failed) #3. if successful, install the default lapack mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/lapack cp lapack_LINUX.a /usr/local/lib/lapack/liblapack.a cp blas_LINUX.a /usr/local/lib/lapack/libf77blas.a #
Installing ATLAS and LAPACK
The following is a first attempt to almost create a shell script for installation of ATLAS and LAPACK. It does not work right now and it is specific to a particular platform. It is posted here to archive it and throw into the public domain, maybe others will find it useful. It is at least a documentation of some relevant notes on the procedure. Corrections and updates would be really appreciated. Alternatives to automate this process also welcome, but not rpm (unless it can be demonstrated that an rpm installation achieves an equivalent optimized blas to a full compilation). Also, advice about integrating this with compilation of python and numeric python libraries much appreciated too, particularly the definition of some commonly accepted paths for the library installation, so that all python compilation can link the libraries without having to modify their configure scripts. ### For background about creating and using libraries with linux, see http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/libtool.html http://www.dwheeler.com/program-library http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Program-Library-HOWTO.html http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/html_single/Program-Library-HOWTO.html "In theory, code in static ELF libraries that is linked into an executable should run slightly faster (by 1-5%) than a shared library or a dynamically loaded library, but in practice this rarely seems to be the case due to other confounding factors." Locations for installation (from Program-Library-HOWTO): 3.1.2. Filesystem Placement Shared libraries must be placed somewhere in the filesystem. Most open source software tends to follow the GNU standards; for more information see the info file documentation at info:standards#Directory_Variables. The GNU standards recommend installing by default all libraries in /usr/local/lib when distributing source code (and all commands should go into /usr/local/bin). They also define the convention for overriding these defaults and for invoking the installation routines. The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) discusses what should go where in a distribution (see http://www.pathname.com/fhs). According to the FHS, most libraries should be installed in /usr/lib, but libraries required for startup should be in /lib and libraries that are not part of the system should be in /usr/local/lib. There isn't really a conflict between these two documents; the GNU standards recommend the default for developers of source code, while the FHS recommends the default for distributors (who selectively override the source code defaults, usually via the system's package management system). In practice this works nicely: the ``latest'' (possibly buggy!) source code that you download automatically installs itself in the ``local'' directory (/usr/local), and once that code has matured the package managers can trivially override the default to place the code in the standard place for distributions. Note that if your library calls programs that can only be called via libraries, you should place those programs in /usr/local/libexec (which becomes /usr/libexec in a distribution). One complication is that Red Hat-derived systems don't include /usr/local/lib by default in their search for libraries; see the discussion below about /etc/ld.so.conf. Other standard library locations include /usr/X11R6/lib for X-windows. Note that /lib/security is used for PAM modules, but those are usually loaded as DL libraries (also discussed below). ... 3.2. How Libraries are Used ... The list of directories to be searched is stored in the file /etc/ld.so.conf. Many Red Hat-derived distributions don't normally include /usr/local/lib in the file /etc/ld.so.conf. I consider this a bug, and adding /usr/local/lib to /etc/ld.so.conf is a common ``fix'' required to run many programs on Red Hat-derived systems. ### # A. ATLAS INSTALLATION 1. download and extract ATLAS source, eg cd /usr/local/src/ tar zxvf atlas3.6.0.tar.gz cd ATLAS #2. follow the INSTALL.txt instructions to build it and test ATLAS ./configure make #3. if successful, copy atlas files into common system locations, eg mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/atlas cp lib/Linux_P4SSE2/* /usr/local/lib/atlas/ chmod +x /usr/local/lib/atlas/lib* mkdir -p /usr/local/include/atlas cp include/Linux_P4SSE2/* /usr/local/include/atlas/ ### # B. LAPACK INSTALLATION # #1. download and extract LAPACK source cd /usr/local/src/ tar zxvf lapack.tgz cd LAPACK #2. make LAPACK with all defaults cp INSTALL/make.inc.$PLATFORM make.inc make #(On my fedora core 3 system, the timing failed) #3. if successful, install the default lapack mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/lapack cp lapack_LINUX.a /usr/local/lib/lapack/liblapack.a cp blas_LINUX.a /usr/local/lib/lapack/libf77blas.a #
