Also, we are exploring the use of conda for installing the dependencies instead of compiling from scratch. There is some preliminary work in https://github.com/cctbx/conda_build for dependencies and the "conda_compiler" branch in cctbx_project for building. The "cctbx_dependencies" conda package already installs mkl and it would be easy to install openblas.

This should be ready in a few months once some other details (e.g. building releases, filling in missing dependencies) are worked out.

I would be all in favour of using conda. Basically, to carry on what I proposed, my plan was to look how conda does it, and then parrot that in Python. Not terribly productive. But that’s a significant commitment, I understand.