Re: README.MacOS

[Jarno Rajahalme]

I just checked the status of my bug report with Apple regarding 64-bit BLAS. It 
is still open and unresolved. I also redid my check to confirm that the problem 
still exists. My test case is online at: 
http://www.macresearch.org/lapackblas-fortran-106#comment-17217

Maybe the README.MacOS should state that:

"As of OSX 10.6.6, blas (a part of Framework Accelerate) is not working 
correctly in 64-bit mode. Alternative blas library (such as ATLAS) has to be 
used for 64-bit builds."

You may also want to add a reference to 
http://www.macresearch.org/lapackblas-fortran-106#comment-17217 , so that the 
presence of this bug can be verified with later OSX versions.

  Jarno

On Jan 24, 2011, at 14:37 , ext Lukas Reichlin wrote:

> Hi Jarno
> 
> Your information is exactly what I've been looking for!  I'm working on a new 
> control package based on a Fortran library and I have exactly the problem you 
> describe (vecLib).  There's an octave bug report [1] as well as a MacPorts 
> ticket [2] for octave-devel 3.3.90.  May I ask you to have a look at it?  I 
> would be very happy if you could give us some advice.
> 
> Best Regards,
> Lukas
> 
> [1]
> https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?32009
> 
> [2]
> https://trac.macports.org/ticket/27980#comment:13
> 
> 
> On 24.01.2011, at 11:56, Jarno Rajahalme wrote:
> 
>> I have been building Octave from sources on OSX using GCC 4.5. To avoid 
>> crashes LDFLAGS needs to have the newer libstdc++ as the first file to be 
>> linked with, like:
>> 
>> export LDFLAGS="/opt/local/lib/gcc45/libstdc++.6.dylib"
>> 
>> (Above before ./configure)
>> 
>> Without this Octave segfaults when compiled with newer-than-Apple GCC.
>> 
>> Also, Apple blas (vecLib) does not work with 64-bit gfortran (4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 
>> nor 4.5). Complex functions obviously fail (and segment fault) without -ff2c 
>> option, but then other non-complex routines return incorrect answers when 
>> -ff2c is enabled, so that configure fails. So with 64-bit OSX you pretty 
>> much have to use atlas and/or lapack.
>> 
>> Would information like this be of interest in README.MacOS?
>> 
>> Jarno
>> 
>> On Jan 24, 2011, at 9:51 , ext John W. Eaton wrote:
>> 
>>> On 23-Jan-2011, Ben Abbott wrote:
>>> 
>>> | I've edited the README.MacOS file to include instructions on using 
>>> MacPorts.
>>> | 
>>> | I'm not a MacPorts user so I may have some things wrong.
>>> | 
>>> | Corrections and/or constructive critique would be appreciated.
>>> 
>>> | 1. General Users
>>> | ================
>>> | 
>>> | A MacOS bundle is available from sourceforge.
>>> | 
>>> |   http://octave.sourceforge.net/index.html
>>> | 
>>> | There are also Octave packages available from both Fink and MacPorts.  
>>> Each
>>> | of these package managers handle the details of compiling Octave from 
>>> source.
>>> | 
>>> |   http://www.finkproject.com
>>> |   http://www.macports.org/
>>> 
>>> Users might also want to build from source for various reasons.  They
>>> will probably want to build using a stable release rather than using
>>> the sources from the Mercurial archive.  So you might rename this
>>> first section "Easy to install Binary Releases" (or similar) and the
>>> section for Developers could be renamed "Building from Source" and
>>> then explain where and how to get the sources from Mercurial (you
>>> could just point to the instructions on savannah) and also that stable
>>> releases are availble from ftp.gnu.org in the directory
>>> pub/gnu/octave.  Then I think the only difference in the directions
>>> would be that once you've got the sources you should skip the
>>> autogen.sh step if you are building from sources downloaded in a tar
>>> file.
>>> 
>>> jwe
>> 
>