Re: Using OpenBLAS for Octave.app

[Andrew Janke]

On 10/21/19 8:30 PM, Marius Schamschula wrote:
> 
>> On Oct 21, 2019, at 7:11 PM, Andrew Janke <address@hidden
>> <mailto:address@hidden>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 10/21/19 7:48 PM, Marius Schamschula wrote:
>>> However, until Apple started playing with kernel timing several macOS
>>> versions ago, all my octave installs used Atlas. Now Atlas is useless
>>> under macOS.
>>
>> I didn't know about this! Is there anywhere I can read about it?
> 
> See: https://trac.macports.org/ticket/54342

Thanks! That's what I needed.

>>> If I recall correctly, Accelerate Framework has had some technical
>>> issues (i.e. erroneous results) in the past. I don’t know if these have
>>> been fixed.
>>
>> There are some nagging test failures that happen under Apple Accelerate
>> but not under OpenBLAS. They have not been fixed AFAIK, nor are likely
>> to be.
>>
>>> OpenBLAS is a variant under MacPorts, though the default variant (and
>>> thus the pre-compiled package) uses the Accelerate Framework.
>>
>> I'm afraid Octave.app has no space for variants: our goal is to provide
>> a super-simple one-step drag-and-drop install for Octave on Mac. So
>> we're interested in deciding the Right way to do this, instead of
>> providing users options.
> 
> That wasn’t my intention. I was pointing out that this combination has
> been tested.
> I personally have installed it a the cost of having to build it locally
> (and every time there is a revision or upstream update).

Oh! Understood. That makes sense.

And an FYI for folks: I found out that core Homebrew switched to using
OpenBLAS for all their BLAS needs, including for Octave, earlier this
year. Other Mac scientific computing packages seem to be heading that
way, too.

https://github.com/octave-app/octave-app/issues/118#issuecomment-545588676

So I'm pretty sure Octave.app will make the switch too.

Cheers,
Andrew