Pkg.add("FFTW") shouldn't install MKL

[antoine-levitt]

Since 8a9197a, ]add FFTW installs MKL. I'm not a free software absolutist, but I don't think adding such a core package (that used to be part of base) should download a non-free binary dependency. A much more practical concern is that MKL is a whopping 130mb, and my work connection sucks...

[ararslan]

I definitely agree, but this is a difficult problem to address at the moment, since there is no support in the package manager for conditional dependencies.

[antoine-levitt]

Given that seems to be still some time away, perhaps reverting to the previous state would be best? Even with a good connection the download still takes quite a bit of time (during which it is unclear what's happening)

[ararslan]

The previous state was having MKL managed by Conda, which introduces a Python dependency. It sort of seems like there are no good options at the moment...

[antoine-levitt]

I know very little about these things (and am eternally grateful to the poor souls that have to manage this) so sorry if I'm missing something, but isn't depending on python way better than depending on MKL? It's free software, it's more lightweight, it's shared by more packages, it runs on all sane platforms, and it's installed on most machines already.

[Keno]

isn't depending on python way better than depending on MKL

It was using Python to install MKL

[antoine-levitt]

Not by default though? It's definitely the first time I've noticed ]add FFTW downloads 130mb.

[stevengj]

Previously it only installed Anaconda Python etcetera if FFTW.jl was configured to use MKL. (It installed Conda.jl unconditionally, but Conda.jl installs Anaconda lazily.) Now, because Pkg doesn't support optional dependencies, we must unconditionally download MKL_jll.

[antoine-levitt]

So why not switch back to the old system until Pkg supports optional dependencies?

[xgdgsc]

Please revert this. You are making my life with a bad network and AMD processors very hard.

[KristofferC]

The artifact system already supports "lazy artifacts" that are only downloaded when the artifact is actually used.

[giordano]

With latest release of MKL_jll, v2019.0.117+2 (don't dare to install v2019.0.117+1, make sure to update the registry) the tarball of MKL_jll is not downloaded upon just installing the package, but only when doing using MKL_jll.

In the context of FFTW.jl, this means that the tarball is never downloaded unless you had set JULIA_FFTW_PROVIDER to MKL. This should effectively fix the issue, so I'm going to close the ticket.

[c42f]

Thank you Mosè, that's excellent!