[Gretl-users] Linux versions of gretl

The problems that I have encountered with blas/lapack are due to unresolved symbols as you describe. They are not consistent across versions: version 3.0-039 of lapack generates this error but not version 3.0-020. I can't install more recent versions of blas/lapack - eg version 3.1-xxx - because this requires more recent versions of the C and Fortran libraries which are not compatible with current versions of OpenSuse, SLED, Mepis, Xandros and older versions of Ubuntu (I haven't tried this yet in 7.04). Relying upon an old version of lapack is a nuisance because my systems keep on trying to update it (I can't get the "keep" command to work properly). I have only tried gretl fully on Ubuntu 6.06, which caused the problems that I described. But note that 6.06 is an LTS (long term support) version so that cautious users would be inclined to stick with it for reasons of stability. With respect to libpng I was trying to install gretl 1.6.5 from the website rpm in different Suse systems. I don't like recompiling programs unless it is absolutely necessary. The repositories were unable to resolve the dependencies for libpng and I could not do it manually because the trail became too difficult. Distributing a version of gretl including troublesome libraries (along the lines of the Windows and Mac versions) would be fine for most people provided that the order in which libraries are searched can be controlled - I am not sufficiently familiar with the way in which Linux does this to be sure since my programming was all done on much older systems. Gordon