Make publicly available the mkl-devel conda package

[Edson_Tadeu_M_1]

First, I'd like to congratulate Intel on the awesome initiatives to (1) make MKL freely available through the Community Licensing, (2) develop the super fast Intel Distribution for Python and (3) make it available through Continuum's conda.

There's only one thing that is really missing now: to provide a mkl-devel conda package so that we are able to build other packages that depend on MKL using conda-build locally or on the conda-forge infrastructure.

Continuum already have an internal private mkl-devel package which they use to build their version of numpy and other packages, but they are not able to publish it due to licensing restrictions (despite MKL having a free version already), please see:

https://github.com/ContinuumIO/anaconda-recipes/issues/50

and:

https://github.com/ContinuumIO/anaconda-issues/issues/888

Could Intel make this package available, or provide a way to make it available?

Thanks!

[Zhang_Z_Intel]

As far as I know, this is being considered. It's just a matter of time when Intel will implement it. Hopefully, it'll happen in near future.

[Edson_Tadeu_M_]

Zhang Z. (Intel) wrote:

As far as I know, this is being considered. It's just a matter of time when Intel will implement it. Hopefully, it'll happen in near future.

Cool, this is great news! Looking forward to it! :)

[Edson_Tadeu_M_1]

Any news on this?

As the python community moves to conda to install packages such as numpy, scipy and even PETSc, and as the conda community moves to conda-forge to build packages, a free (open-source friendly) "mkl-devel" package is really needed, otherwise MKL risks being replaced by OpenBLAS (it is already being replaced...). Look here:

https://github.com/conda-forge/conda-forge.github.io/issues/232

https://github.com/conda-forge/metpy-feedstock/issues/6

https://github.com/conda-forge/staged-recipes/issues/628#issuecomment-220758751

[Robert_C_Intel]

We now have development packages for MKL with yum, apt, and conda. They are free with a permissive license.

https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/installing-intel-free-libs-and-python

Please help us by sharing this news with open source projects.

Robert

[Dmitry_K_]

Dear Robert,

Thank you for the great news!

[Simon_D_1]

Dear Robert,

I think the mkl-devel recipe from conda lacks a correct license which is why conda-forge devs are not sure about releasing it. Is this BSD 3-clause? https://anaconda.org/intel/mkl-devel

Best, Simon

[Robert_C_Intel]

Hi Simon,

Sorry for not replying, somehow I missed your question.

mkl-devel is a meta package without any files that requires mkl and mkl-include. Each of those packages contain a license file. It is similar to BSD 3-clause in that it allows redistribution and commercial use. If there is anything making it difficult for conda-forge devs to use MKL, please let me know.

We are going to add a license file to mkl-devel to make it clear.

Robert