From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Ricardo Wurmus <ricardo.wurmus@mdc-berlin.de>
Subject: Re: R
Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2016 18:17:04 +0100
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To: Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr>
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Ricardo Wurmus <ricardo.wurmus@mdc-berlin.de> writes:

> There=E2=80=99s a separate section for OpenBLAS, which also mentions th=
at using
> a =E2=80=9Cshared BLAS=E2=80=9D is a preferred alternative to linking w=
ith a particular
> BLAS implementation.  We already pass =E2=80=9C--enable-BLAS-shlib=E2=80=
=9D, so we
> actually do use a shared BLAS, IIUC.
>
> I guess we could drop the =E2=80=9C--with-blas=E2=80=9D flag and see if=
 that helps.  I
> remember struggling with this a lot in the past.  I=E2=80=99ll try buil=
ding R
> again without that flag and see if it still works.

I dropped the flag and noticed that OpenBLAS is not mentioned at all (it
does retain a reference, but that=E2=80=99s expected when =E2=80=9Copenbl=
as=E2=80=9D is among
the inputs), so I also dropped =E2=80=9Copenblas=E2=80=9D from the inputs=
 and R built
just fine.

It=E2=80=99s a bit sad to me that we won=E2=80=99t be able to just use th=
is BLAS
implementation, but if it fixes the build on ARM and MIPS I=E2=80=99m all=
 for
it.

I can also confirm that dropping openblas from the R build =E2=80=9Cfixes=
=E2=80=9D the
segfault when running

    x <- eigen(crossprod(matrix(rnorm(50 * 500), 50, 500)))

as reported here: https://github.com/xianyi/OpenBLAS/issues/703

So, I think it=E2=80=99s a good idea to build R without OpenBLAS on all
architectures for now.

~~ Ricardo