Build scripts for minpack.
The primary goal of minpack-builder is to provide an unified C API and a standard way to build-and-install binaries (shared and/or static library in machine code) of the double precision version of MINPACK-1 [1] - or simply minpack. In order to achieve this goal, we employ the powerful CMake [2] build system to handle platform and compiler intricacies on different operating systems.
Tip
This project is well-suited for C/C++ programmers who want to have the old and good minpack library with a stable C API to work with, regardless of operating system and vendor-specific naming conventions applied by different Fortran compilers.
The original minpack [1] is a battle-tested minimization package written in Fortran 77 for solving a system of nonlinear equations and nonlinear least squares problems, discussed in details at [3]. Throughout the years, popular scientific libraries like SciPy [4] and Eigen [5] have been using minpack to perform nonlinear optimization.
Important
Do not confuse the original minpack [1] written in Fortran 77 with Modernized Minpack [6]. Here, we compile the original (old) minpack library directly from the source code provided by netlib. On the other hand, modern minpack [6] ported the original code to newer Fortran standards. If you are a Fortran programmer, you definitely should take a look at modern minpack.
On a wide range of Linux operating systems [7], due the widespread adoption of gfortran [8] as robust and free option for a Fortran compiler, most distributions package minpack and make it available for their users through the package manager.
Recently, on Windows, through the great MSYS2 ecosystem [9] which keeps that feeling of the Linux world, I authored with contributions [10] the initial integration of minpack as a package on MSYS2 [11]. The insertion of minpack into MSYS2 repositories allowed Windows developers to have access to native binaries, compiled either by gfortran [8] or LLVM flang-new [12], which is also a free Fortran compiler under the LLVM project umbrella.
While MSYS2 is an excellent choice for people working with GCC-like toolchains, Microsoft Visual C/C++ (MSVC) build tools [13] are extremely popular among Windows developers. Whenever someone is looking for a Fortran compiler that integrates nicely with MSVC build tools, namely Intel® Fortran Compiler [14] and LLVM flang-new [12], the developer will have to build minpack from the source code on its own. Moreover, Fortran compilers often export symbols with different naming conventions, leading to different C APIs if standard compiler options were applied.
In order to provide an unified C API for minpack, we use CMake [2] as a build system to download the source code directly from the official minpack website [1]. Then, we handle vendor-specific parameters of the Fortran compiler to build the library conforming to the API seen on Linux operating systems. Finally, we install it on a suitable location defined by the developer, making the minpack binaries easily discoverable as a CMake [2] module or pkg-config [15] module.
Browse the documentation for build instructions, guides on various platforms with different compiler toolchains, and usage in general.
Tip
The heavy testing of the capabilities of minpack-builder to build minpack happens on our project https://github.com/luau-project/minpackex, which extends minpack API to allow an easier usage from C/C++. Check it out!
At the moment, the continuous integration on minpack-builder github is able to build and install minpack in the following combination of platform / compiler toolchain.
Note
In the tables below, MSVC-like means the underline linker is MSVC-compatible. Therefore, GCC-like means the underline linker is GCC-compatible.
| Fortran Compiler | Compiler Version | Build Status |
|---|---|---|
| GFortran | 14.1.0 |  |
| Intel LLVM ifx (MSVC-like) | 2024.1.0 |  |
| LLVM flang-new (MSVC-like) | 18.1.7 |  |
| LLVM flang-new (GCC-like) | 18.1.6 |  |
| Fortran Compiler | Compiler Version | Build Status |
|---|---|---|
| GFortran | 11.4.0 |  |
| Intel LLVM ifx (GCC-like) | 2024.1.2 |  |
| LLVM flang-new (GCC-like) | 18.1.6 |  |
Important
At the moment (June 2, 2024), we are aware that the current version of this project is not able to build minpack with LFortran compiler [16] paired with MSVC Build Tools on Windows (latest version present on Miniforge [17], which is 0.36.0) by running
conda install -c conda-forge -n base -y lfortran
We also tried LFortran using the binaries provided by MSYS2 platform, and LFortran didn't build minpack either. However, this seems to be a limitation of LFortran.
- minpack. Accessed May 2, 2024. https://www.netlib.org/minpack;
- CMake. Accessed May 2, 2024. https://cmake.org/;
- Moré, Jorge J., Burton S. Garbow, and Kenneth E. Hillstrom. User guide for MINPACK-1.[In FORTRAN]. No. ANL-80-74. Argonne National Lab.(ANL), Argonne, IL (United States), 1980. DOI: 10.2172/6997568;
- SciPy. Accessed May 2, 2024. https://github.com/scipy/scipy/tree/main/scipy/optimize/minpack;
- Eigen. Accessed May 2, 2024. https://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/unsupported/index.html;
- Modernized Minpack. Accessed May 3, 2024. https://github.com/fortran-lang/minpack;
- minpack on repology. Accessed May 2, 2024. https://repology.org/project/minpack;
- GFortran. Accessed May 2, 2024. https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GFortran;
- MSYS2 project. Accessed May 2, 2024. https://www.msys2.org/;
- minpack insertion on MSYS2. Accessed May 2, 2024. msys2/MINGW-packages#20643;
- MSYS2 package for minpack. Accessed May 2, 2024. https://packages.msys2.org/base/mingw-w64-libminpack;
- LLVM flang-new . Accessed May 2, 2024. https://flang.llvm.org/docs/;
- Microsoft Visual C/C++ (MSVC) build tools. Accessed May 2, 2024. https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/visual-cpp-build-tools;
- Intel® Fortran Compiler. Accessed May 2, 2024. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/tools/oneapi/fortran-compiler.html;
- pkg-config. Accessed May 2, 2024. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pkg-config/pkg-config;
- LFortran. Accessed June 2, 2024. https://lfortran.org/;
- Miniforge. Accessed June 2, 2024. https://github.com/conda-forge/miniforge.