OpenBLAS binary packages

[Nicolas Pavillon]

Hi, 

> The Portfile does disable the use of binary archives, by clearing the
> archive_sites option.
> <https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/blob/master/math/OpenBLAS/Portfile#L17-L19>
> 
> The assumption seems to be that if you are using OpenBLAS, then you must
> require maximum performance and hence a build that is tuned for your
> specific hardware. A pre-built binary of course cannot provide this.

It was indeed the point when I made the Portfile. It was also consistent with comparable Portfiles such as atlas, which uses the same technique. 
Also, at the point of developing the Portfile, it was mostly standalone, so that the burden of building the port would be limited to users specifically installing it. 

Now that OpenBLAS became more widely used and is now a dependency for several other ports, I could look into making a ‘generic’ version as suggested, if it is considered preferable to reduce the building time at the cost of performance. 
I would have to confirm if a generic version could also be made, as there have also been issues with build failures with older architectures.

Cheers, 

Nicolas

> On May 15, 2019, at 17:38, Joshua Root <jmr at macports.org> wrote:
> 
>> I am trying to understand why I am not able to get the OpenBLAS port to install exclusively from binary packages, i.e. using something like:
>>  sudo port -b install OpenBLAS
>> Even if I prepare a local repository with the prebuilt binary packages it indicates that it is not able to find any binary package and the above command fails. I have no such problem with other ports.
>> I had a quick look to see if there is something in the Portfile itself that forces compilation from source but did not find anything obvious. Is there such a mechanism? what is it? and can this be disabled / overridden?
> 
> The Portfile does disable the use of binary archives, by clearing the
> archive_sites option.
> <https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/blob/master/math/OpenBLAS/Portfile#L17-L19>
> 
> The assumption seems to be that if you are using OpenBLAS, then you must
> require maximum performance and hence a build that is tuned for your
> specific hardware. A pre-built binary of course cannot provide this.
> 
> There is no way to change this short of editing the Portfile or setting
> your own archive_sites value on the command line.
> 
> - JOsh