Re: UMFPACK Installation Problem

[Quentin Spencer]

Krishnan V wrote:
> On 10/8/06, *David Bateman* <address@hidden 
> <mailto:address@hidden>> wrote:
>
>     Joe Koski wrote:
>     >
>     > Sorry for my oversimplification, and yes Linux/UNIX is very
>     flexible about
>     > location. My problem with the octave configure script and the sparse
>     > libraries was that ./configure seemed to be looking for things like
>     > /ufsparse/any_header.h instead of just any_header.h. I had
>     header files in
>     > obvious places on my shell path, and the script still couldn't
>     find them. I
>     > had to copy multiple copies of some header files into
>     /usr/local/include/
>     > and /usr/local/include/ufsparse until configure could find them all.
>     >
>     > Also, although it isn't part of the sparse matrix libraries, a "make
>     > install" type script that copies all the correct files into
>     whatever is the
>     > correct directory would really aid in octave installation. Are
>     the Florida
>     > sparse matrix folks working in that direction, or is a special
>     octave script
>     > in order?
>     >
>     > Joe
>
>     Joe,
>
>     The autoconf macro that searches for the headers is
>
>       AC_CHECK_HEADERS([ufsparse/umfpack.h umfpack/umfpack.h umfpack.h],
>     <found>, <not found>)
>
>     where AC_CHECK_HEADERS is a standard autoconf macro. So the header in
>     order will look n <include_dir>/ufsparse/umfpack.h,
>     <include_dir>/umfpack/umfpack.h and <include_dir>/umfpack.h. So if it
>     did it seems autoconf on your system has a problem.
>
>     D.
>
> Yes, the UMFPACK,CXSparse,COLAMD have to be installed within the 
> umfsparse/ directory. This could be located within /usr/include or 
> /usr/local/include .  I put it under the latter directory and the 
> configure script finds it. Unfortunately, the compilation of UMFPACK 
> doesnt work. Looks like rpms are the only solution.
> Would it make sense to include these packages in octave itself in the 
> next version/release?

No. There are many other dependencies, and John has already made it 
clear he doesn't want to be including them in the octave source. The 
problem here is that ufsparse has no configure script or make install 
targets, so getting them compiled and installed where octave can find 
them is not for beginners. I think this is a case where the developer 
does not have the necessary familiarity with autotools or whatever other 
solutions might be out there for this, and he probably does not consider 
it a priority to go learn the necessary tools. The question is whether 
he would accept patches from someone in the octave community to make 
this easier.

For what it's worth, the Fedora rpm package puts all of the libraries in 
/usr/lib and the headers in /usr/include/ufsparse, and octave finds them 
with no trouble.

Quentin