Supplying NumPy site.cfg arguments to pip

Question

I'm using NumPy built against Intel's Math Kernel Library. I use virtualenv, and typically use pip to install packages.

However, in order for NumPy to find the MKL libraries, it's necessary to create a site.cfg file in the NumPy source directory prior to compiling it, then manually build and install. I could script this whole process, but I was hoping for a simpler solution.

I have a standard site.cfg file that can be used for this purpose under version control. Are there any pip command line options that will tell it to copy a particular file to the source directory before building a package?

Alternatively, are there any environment variables that can be set instead of supplying the library paths in a site.cfg file? Here is the site.cfg file that I use. It was taken almost verbatim from Intel's site.

[mkl] library_dirs = /opt/intel/composer_xe_2013.1.117/mkl/lib/intel64 include_dirs = /opt/intel/composer_xe_2013.1.117/mkl/include mkl_libs = mkl_rt lapack_libs = 

For reference, I'm running Ubuntu, Python 2.7, and NumPy 1.6.

Answer 1

From the source (https://github.com/numpy/numpy/blob/master/site.cfg.example):

To assist automatic installation like easy_install, the user's home directory will also be checked for the file ~/.numpy-site.cfg .

Is that a workable solution? You'd still need to preload the home directories with the global .numpy-site.cfg, but you wouldn't have to muck with the build or installation after that.

Answer 2

I ended up putting together a script to automate this. Here it is, in case it can help someone else. I've tested it in Python 2.7, but it should work elsewhere without significant modifications.

from __future__ import unicode_literals  import io import os.path import re import subprocess import urllib2  # This downloads, builds, and installs NumPy against the MKL in the # currently active virtualenv  file_name = 'numpy-1.6.2.tar.gz' url = ('http://sourceforge.net/projects/numpy/files/NumPy/1.6.2/'        'numpy-1.6.2.tar.gz/download')  def main():      # download NumPy and unpack it     file_data = urllib2.urlopen(url).read()     with io.open(file_name, 'wb') as fobj:         fobj.write(file_data)     subprocess.check_call('tar -xvf {0}'.format(file_name), shell=True)     base_name = re.search(r'(.*)\.tar\.gz$', file_name).group(1)     os.chdir(base_name)      # write out a site.cfg file in the build directory     site_cfg = (         '[mkl]\n'         'library_dirs = /opt/intel/composer_xe_2013.1.117/mkl/lib/intel64\n'         'include_dirs = /opt/intel/composer_xe_2013.1.117/mkl/include\n'         'mkl_libs = mkl_rt\n'         'lapack_libs =\n')     with io.open('site.cfg', 'wt', encoding='UTF-8') as fobj:         fobj.write(site_cfg)      # build and install NumPy     subprocess.check_call('python setup.py build', shell=True)     subprocess.check_call('python setup.py install', shell=True)   if __name__ == '__main__':     main()