[Chicken-users] Major changes to the blas egg

[Ivan Raikov]

Hi all,

   The current API of the blas egg makes my code very awkward, since
I have to copy those input arguments that are overwritten, and I have
to include wrappers that check the sizes of the input matrices. So I
have created a new BLAS API, which is very similar to that of the
atlas-lapack egg. In the new API, every BLAS routine comes in three
flavors: safe & pure (checks the sizes of the input matrices/vectors,
and has no side effects), safe & destructive (can modify some of the
input matrices/vectors), unsafe & destructive (does not include size
checks). I have also made all LDx and INCx arguments to be optional,
which should also improve the readability of code that uses BLAS.

   Does anyone object to these changes? I am still writing the
documentation for the new API, so I will not be merging my changes
until next week, but I wanted to let people know in advance. My
changes are located in the "safe" branch of the blas repository. 

        
    -Ivan