Post 20: Installing LAPACK ( Linear Algebra PACKage) on Slackware (or any other Linux distro)

LAPACK is written in Fortran 90 and provides routines for solving systems of simultaneous linear equations, least-squares solutions of linear systems of equations, eigenvalue problems, and singular value problems. 

Much of IT++ functionality is dependent on the facilities it imports from LAPACK. So this post is a follow-up to my previous post regarding IT++. In my opinion, and also in the opinions of the designers of IT++, it is a very important software. (inv() in IT++ won't work without LAPACK!!).

1. Download the latest version of LAPACK from here.
2. untar it and cd into the directory that was created by untarring. 
•  tar -xvf lapack-3.4.2
• cd lapack-3.4.2
3. You will notice a file called make.inc.example. Copy that into another file and call it make.inc.
• cp make.inc.example make.inc 
4. There is a file called librefblas.a in lapack-3.4.2/BLAS/SRC
5. Copy the file to the current directory.
• cp  lapack-3.4.2/BLAS/SRC .
6. Open make.inc in the editor of choice (mine being vim) and edit the following line as shown:
• BLASLIB = ../../librefblas.a  as
  BLASLIB = <absolute path to this file> (eg: /home/user/Documents/lapack-3.4.2/librefblas)
7. Now enter make.

 

Your install should be successful.