[Pkg-scicomp-devel] Current status of libatlas - offer of help

[Ondrej Certik]

Hi Matthew!

On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 5:01 PM, Matthew Brett<matthew.brett at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I wanted to email to ask about the plans for libatlas - and to see if
> there is anything we (some members of the python numpy community) can
> do to help.
>
> We noticed that Debian is still using atlas 3.6.0 - now very old.
> Among other things, there have been some optimizations for the Core2
> since then.  Fedora 11 packages the current stable release (3.8.3).
>
> Is it easy to give an idea what the blocks are to moving Debian up to
> current stable?  Is it just time, or are there some technical hurdles?

It's time to fix the technical hurdles. The current packaging is very
hard to maintain and almost impossible to upgrade to 3.8, so far noone
has succeeded. So it seems the whole packaging will have to be redone,
unless someone manages to fix it.

>  Is there work that can easily be shared between the Fedora and Debian
> packaging?  Please forgive my ignorance of this area.
>
> We have some funds that we may be able to use to pay for work on this
> - can we ask for advice whether this would be useful, and if so, how?
>
> Lastly - does anyone know who is working on Ubuntu package updates?
> There are some problems with the current packages that are causing us
> some anxiety...
>
> Many thanks - and sorry to email with so little knowledge of the
> current state of play,

Thanks for asking and especially for taking the initiative to get this
finally fixed.

I know that Sylvestre Ledru from INRIA has started to work on this --
Sylvestre, what is the status of it?
There are more people on this list who want to get it fixed (e.g. me,
Kumar, ...), it's just that noone had time to actually do it.

Ondrej