Request For Help updating Numerical Library Packages

[Drew Parsons <dparsons@debian.org>]

Hi all,

I've uploaded the new version of PETSc (3.6.2), and I have SLEPc
(3.6.1) in line ready and waiting for PETSc to pass the NEW queue.

PETSc and SLEPc both provide access to external numerical libraries,
many of which also ought to be updated.

PETSC:
	BLAS
	LAPACK
	SCALAPACK
	Hypre
	MUMPS 
	PTScotch
	SuiteSparse  (new upstream version soon)
	SuperLU

also hdf5, fftw. 
ViennaCL is not currently built in but we could activate it in PETSc.
(PETSC appears to have dropped spooles support)


SLEPC:
	ARPACK


To spread the maintenance load, could I encourage you to consider being
a buddy for one or two of these libraries and update them to the latest
versions (add multiarch support at the same time) ?

Hypre could be the first one to update.  I had to add a build hack to
PETSc 3.6.2 to build against the old version of hypre.

petsc4py will also need updating. Whoever takes that on could consider
adding slepc4py to Debian.

If anyone has extra time to invest in the numerical libraries, there
are also a handful of others supported by PETSc and SLEPc which are not
currently in Debian.  But let's first get the libaries we're already
carrying updated.

Cheers,

Drew