Re: UMFPACK Installation Problem

[Joe Koski]

on 10/8/06 6:00 AM, David Bateman at 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.


David,

Thanks for the explanation, and it explains the behavior I observed during
the installation of the sparse matrix libraries.

When installing header files on my Mac with OS X 10.4.7, I did several
iterations through config.log, looking for missing headers. Sometimes it
complained it was missing /ufsparse/header1.h and on a different try,
configure would complain it was missing just plain header2.h. For about an
hour, I kept shoving missing headers into wherever configure said it was
looking and repeating the process until it stopped complaining.

At that point, octave compiled without problems (after I added CAMD), and I
wasn't about to go back and figure out the sequence of what I had to do.

This just points out that the sparse matrix libraries do not yet have the
final polish of other open source efforts. For example, to build the
libraries, I had to make several guesses in config.mk regarding the location
of BLAS, LAPACK, xerbla, etc., about which the average octave user has no
need to know. Some builds of octave that Marius Schramshula had done months
ago were of great help to me in getting everything located.

For octave to continue to use these libraries will require a more
standardized installation process for non-Linux users. For Macs, the
hpc.sourceforge.net build will aid distribution of binaries for 2.9.9+, and
I suspect there will be an octave-2.9.9 version there soon.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Joe