
GNU Scientific Library 2.0 - lelf
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2015-10/msg00014.html
======
gaius

        It has been reported to compile on the following other platforms,
    
        SunOS 4.1.3 & Solaris 2.x (Sparc)
        Alpha GNU/Linux, gcc
        HP-UX 9/10/11, PA-RISC, gcc/cc
        IRIX 6.5, gcc
        m68k NeXTSTEP, gcc
        Compaq Alpha Tru64 Unix, gcc
        FreeBSD, OpenBSD & NetBSD, gcc
        Cygwin
        Apple Darwin 5.4
        Hitachi SR8000 Super Technical Server, cc
    

I love that they are still doing this. Nothing shakes out numerical bugs like
testing on different hardware designs. Would have been good to run the test
suite with ICC and Clang too tho', to be sure.

PS I also love that Hitachi have a product called the "Super Technical Server"
:-)

~~~
fitzwatermellow
Ordinarily, I'd insert a comment here on how much I miss my old NeXTCube,
SparcStation, Apollo, AlphaStation, or Indy...

But the fact is I really, really don't. We are so spoiled now. Spinning up an
AWS gpu cluster in 60 seconds from the beach beats spending a day and a half
just to upgrade a video card ;)

~~~
gaius
Living in a monoculture requires an understanding of local maxima that I think
hasn't been well thought through. So much innovation came from all those
competing hardware designs and OSs.

~~~
pzone
This optimization problem you're conceptualizing is a very strange one indeed.
It's like the only outcome we care about is achieving some perfect
architecture.

In a dynamic optimization problem, where we have to take into account the
current state of the world, and our ignorance of the future, sometimes the
most efficient use decision is going with what we have, since it's good
enough.

I'll put this another way: I don't think there's some terrible shortage of
fundamental computer science research out there, nor is there a shortage of
competing architectures.

One more spin on this. The fact that we have fewer competing architectures
than we used to is itself a sign that existing architectures are pretty good.
First, they are the survivors, and have out-competed the rest. Second, more
importantly, if less research is being done to develop competing platforms,
that means researchers are less optimistic about their ability to improve on
what we currently have.

------
jordigh
It's nice to see that someone took the torch from Brian Gough. The GSL is one
of the best general-purpose free scientific computing packages out there.

------
fitzwatermellow
Any HPC people would care to enlighten us ignoramuses on how the different
frameworks for scientific computing stack up: matlab, octave, mathematica,
gsl, nag, etc... Or is everyone just defaulting to Python and R now ;)

~~~
gsteinb88
GSL is closer to something like BLAS or LAPACK[1] -- it's a library that
provides tested/reliable/optimized implementations of commonly used functions
in scientific computing. The other software you listed is more user facing--
and commonly provides wrappers around libraries like GSL. For instance, MATLAB
relies heavily on BLAS & LAPACK, as does numpy; I'm less familiar with whether
GSL is called from any well known packages other than Octave, but there are
definitely bindings for Python (and maybe R? I don't write any R though)

[1] Respectively, "Basic Linear Algebra Subsystem" and "Linear Algebra
PACKage"

~~~
gh02t
> GSL is called from any well known packages other than Octave

I see GSL used a lot actually. Mostly as a component of big scientific
projects, but it's not as high-profile because it tends to be in a similar
position to stuff like BLAS - really common but not something many people deal
with directly.

------
chris_wot
One thing that has ALWAYS impressed me about Gnu libraries is their extensive
documentation.

gsl is no exception, it's manual can be found here:

[https://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/manual/html_node/](https://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/manual/html_node/)

An aside: is gsl why Gnu Calc is so darned accurate?

------
adolgert
The Gnu Public License forbids redistribution unless what you distribute is
also GPL. It means I can't use this in anything I share on behalf of
scientific groups that want to use Open Source. I've run into this a few
times, and it's rough when GSL is so useful.

~~~
jordigh
You don't have to distribute your own stuff under the terms of the GPL. Any
other GPL-compatible license will work. Most open source licenses are GPL-
compatible, so you should have no problem.

Of course, like you say, this only matters if you want to redistribute. For
in-house use, everything's allowed.

~~~
ISL
Furthermore, unless you're distributing binaries with the GSL compiled in, you
can use any license you want for your own code. The things you wrote, you
wrote. You can distribute those things however you like.

Six months ago, I , like OP, was very confused and concerned about this same
issue. One of several discussions that helped me sort it out:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9477840](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9477840)

------
samuell
Didn't even know this existed. Thanks for highlighting it!

