numpy & non-Apple gcc?

[Adam Mercer]

On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 09:27, Michael Dickens <michaelld at macports.org> wrote:
> Does anyone know or remember why MP's version of numpy (I use py26-numpy) requires non-Apple gcc?  Why -not- use Apple's GCC?  In playing around with various installs (+gcc44, +universal), reading through debug outputs, and testing builds, I do not find that fortran is required to compile (except for tests, which IMHO can be ignored); numpy uses the fortran compiler to link only, but any GCC can do that just as well.  Further, Apple's GCC can easily do multiple -arch's, making a universal install simple compared with (e.g.) gcc44 -- which requires the use of the muniversal portgroup and some other Portgroup tweaking.  I'm not against using gcc44 (or 43 or 45 or whatever), just wondering if anyone knows.

Looking at the history, the use of macports gcc was added when atlas
was added as a dependency [1]. I believe this was due to compiler ABI
differences.

Cheers

Adam

[1] <http://trac.macports.org/changeset/59608/trunk/dports/python/py26-numpy>