NumPy, SciPy, universal builds, and default fortran compiler for scientific ports

[Adam Mercer]

Hi

There are several tickets open regarding build issues that can
essentially be stemmed to the problem that the NumPy and SciPy, at the
moment, do not support universal variants. The first of which #19397
[1] provides a solution to the universal build problem by using a
wrapper script for the compiler.

As far as i can tell tickets #22165, #22360, #22731, #23244, and
#24942 [2-6] are all more or less due to NumPy not building
universally. I never build universally myself so cannot reproduce
these but it seems like a lot of people do so this issue needs to be
fixed.

Another problem is that the default compiler for NumPy and SciPy is
gcc43, whereas ATLAS is built gcc44 as it doesn't build correctly with
gcc43, ticket #25206 [7] just switches over to using gcc44 as the
default compiler so this will not be a solution for the universal
build issue.

The solution proposed in #19397 also switches the default compiler to
gcc44 so this may be the correct approach. What do people this  about
bumping the default compiler to gcc44 for scientific ports (AFAICT
there are no open tickets regarding gcc44 build issues)?

Cheers

Adam

[1] <http://trac.macports.org/ticket/19397>
[2] <http://trac.macports.org/ticket/22165>
[3] <http://trac.macports.org/ticket/22360>
[4] <http://trac.macports.org/ticket/22731>
[5] <http://trac.macports.org/ticket/23244>
[6] <http://trac.macports.org/ticket/24942>
[7] <http://trac.macports.org/ticket/25206>