[CMake] CMake 2.8.7-rc2 ready for testing!

[David Cole]

On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 3:25 PM, Alan W. Irwin <irwin at beluga.phys.uvic.ca>wrote:

> I have investigated further, and I now think Dave is right with his
> desire to go ahead with the release of the rc2 versions of the
> lapack/blas find modules.  (Sorry, Dave, for this flip-flop at the
> last minute, but such deeper investigations take time.)
>
> What appears to be going on is that in 2.8.5 the usual mechanisms to
> choose libraries (CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH, CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH) work
> correctly because they trump (according to my tests) the vendor choice
> (which defaults to ALL).
> So even though my system has both an atlas and generic version of blas
> installed, that
> is ignored for 2.8.5 and the generic blas version is used instead from
> the location designated by CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH or CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH).
>
> But in 2.8.7-rc2, the vendor choice trumps CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH and
> CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH.  So given a choice between the generic version
> of blas in CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH and my system's generic and atlas
> versions of blas, rc2 picks the system atlas version.  I guess that is
> a reasonable choice because for large matrices atlas is normally
> faster than the generic version.  However, for small matrices (such as
> in FreeEOS) it is noticeably slower.
>
> So in sum, there has been a fundamental shift in how the lapack/blas
> libraries are chosen.  I assume that was a deliberate change in design
> so it was probably unfair for me to call it a regression, but a
> prominent announcement of this important change would have been
> appropriate to avoid misunderstandings.
>
> For my own use case, I have found setting -DBLA_VENDOR:STRING=Generic
> and CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH (or presumably CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH which
> I haven't tested for this configuration) gives me
>
>
> -- LAPACK_LIBRARIES =
> /home/software/lapack/install_**double/lib/liblapack.a;/home/**
> software/lapack/install_**double/lib/libblas.a
>
> i.e., the results I want for FreeEOS both 2.8.5 and 2.8.7-rc2.
>
> That'a slightly more complicated for FreeEOS users (which tend to have
> their own built versions of lapack/blas just like I do) than what
> worked up to and including CMake-2.8.5.  But that additional
> complication is completely acceptable.
>
>
> Alan
> __________________________
> Alan W. Irwin
>
> Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
> University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).
>
> Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
> implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
> Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
> software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
> (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
> and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
> __________________________
>
> Linux-powered Science
> __________________________
>


I don't know about the rest of you here, but I certainly welcome
flip-floppers when they flip over to my side of a debate. :-)

2.8.7 is imminent!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.cmake.org/pipermail/cmake/attachments/20111230/e803f875/attachment-0001.htm>