Documentation

The NLPy documentation is typeset using the Sphinx documentation system `http://sphinx.pocoo.org`_ which is particularly suited to documenting Python packages.

The manual in PDF format is in the doc subfolder. The HTML documentation is accessible by pointing your browser to doc/build/contents.html.

Check the paper NLPy---A Large-Scale Optimization Toolkit in Python by Dominique Orban available from `http://www.gerad.ca`_.

If the user so desires, the documentation may be generated afresh as follows:

• To re-generate the HTML documentation, change to the doc subfolder and type:

  make html
  

• To re-generate the PDF documentation, change to the doc subfolder and type:

  make latex
  

  Then change to the build/latex subfolder and type:

  make all-pdf
  

Installation

For now, just:

cp site.template.cfg site.cfg
# Edit site.cfg to adjust to your local settings.
python setup.py build
python setup.py install [--prefix=...]

To select another C compiler:

python setup.py config --compiler=<name> build

To select another Fortran compiler:

python setup.py config_fc --fcompiler=<name> build

To see a list of available Fortran compilers and their names:

python setup.py config_fc --help-fcompiler

To select both a C and a Fortran compiler:

python setup.py config --compiler=<name> config_fc --fcompiler=<name> build

For example, you can force compilation with gfortran by specifying:

--fcompiler=gnu95

and wit g95 by specifiying:

--fcompiler=g95

(note the subtle name difference.)

Troubleshooting

• On an OpenSuSE system I obtain the following error message with both gfortran and g95:

  ld: build/temp.linux-x86_64-2.6/libnlpy_ma27.a(ma27ad.o): relocation
  R_X86_64_32S against 'a local symbol' can not be used when making a shared
  object; recompile with -fPIC build/temp.linux-x86_64-2.6/libnlpy_ma27.a:
  could not read symbols: Bad value
  

  The source of the problem is that on this platform, distutils appears to be compiling a static library without the -fPIC flags, which generates relocatable objects. When subsequently linking against this library to build a shared object, the linker complains. This problem can be resolved by restarting the installation and adding the following flags to the python setup.py command line:

  --f77flags="-ffixed-form -fno-second-underscore -fPIC -O"
  --f90flags="-fno-second-underscore -fPIC -O"