Getting a good BLASlib

Some of these tests need a reference BLAS library to compare against, so you need to fill in your ATLAS install's BLDdir/Make.inc with a trusted, complete BLASlib. On modern machines, we typically just compare against the Fortran77 reference BLAS from netlib, though this makes the install run longer. On slower machines, you may need to use an optimized/vendor BLAS to do testing, but then when you find errors you will need to debug whether it is ATLAS or the optimized BLAS that are causing the problem.

Get the BLAS reference tarfile from www.netlib.org/blas/blas.tgz. then do something similar to the following:

   mkdir FBLAS
   cd FBLAS
   gunzip -c ../blas.tgz | tar xvf -
   gfortran -O -c *.f
   ar r ~/lib/libfblas.a *.o

You may need to substitute for your Fortran77 compiler and flags, and if your system uses ranlib, run that on libfblas.a as well. It is important the Fortran77 compiler and flags used to compile this library match those used by ATLAS!

Now simply set your Make.inc's BLASlib to something like:

   BLASlib = /home/rwhaley/lib/libfblas.a