Re: MBF: don't build against libatlas3-base if possible

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Mo Zhou writes ("MBF: don't build against libatlas3-base if possible"):
> Type: performance improvement, integration
> Affected: `apt rdepends libatlas3-base`
> Severity: important

Hi.  I would like to congratulate you on your work so far.  I am no
expert on this area but from what I read, I want to encourage you :-).

I wanted to comment on this MBF.  If what you say is true, it seems
right in principle.  However, your MBF proposal email was missing the
bug template.

I think it's important to give the MBF recipients a clear set of
instructions on what to change.  And to assume that they may not know
what they are doing :-).

Your email gives clear instructions on what change to the .deb is
wanted:
> [...]  Ideally any program that needs BLAS/CBLAS ABIs should link
> against libblas.so.3 instead of libcblas.so.3 (note the char "c" in
> middle)

But it is not clear to me how this should be achieve in a source
package which currently build-depends on libatlas3-dev.  Can the
build-dependency simpy be swapped out ?  If so, to what ?  Or are
other changes typically needed ?

(Please forgive me for writing this mail without having actually
looked at any affected source package.)

> @Andreas, can we add this point to science-team policy?

I will leave this to Andreas.  But if Andreas and the science-team
agree with you, then this is clearly a candidate for a lintian
warning.  You probably want to file a bug against lintian.

Please keep up the good work.

Regards,
Ian.

-- 
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>   These opinions are my own.

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