MINPACK: numerical library for function minimization and least-squares solutions

MINPACK is a numerical subroutine library for function minimization and least-squares solutions.

Last update: Sat Nov 17 16:21:55 2001

Comments, and reports of errata or bugs, are welcome via e-mail to the author, Nelson H. F. Beebe <beebe@math.utah.edu>. In your report, please supply the full document URL, and the title and Last update time stamp recorded near the top of the document.

Table of contents

• Documentation for MINPACK
• Linking with locally-installed libraries
• Related libraries: EISPACK, LINPACK, and LAPACK

Documentation for MINPACK

There is locally-provided online documentation for MINPACK inside the GNU Emacs info system. In emacs, type C-h i to enter the info system, then type MLocal and MMINPACK. You can do the same thing in the standalone xinfo viewer. That documentation is also available in HTML form for Web browsers.

The only standard reference manual for MINPACK is a now out-of-print technical report (a few printed copies may still be available; contact local management):

@String{pub-ANL     = "Argonne National Laboratory"}
@String{pub-ANL:adr = "Argonne, IL, USA"}

@TechReport{More:minpack,
  author =       "Jorge J. Mor{\'{e}} and Burton S. Garbow 
                 and Kenneth E. Hillstrom",
  title =        "User Guide for {MINPACK-1}",
  number =       "ANL-80-74",
  institution =  pub-ANL,
  address =      pub-ANL:adr,
  month =        aug,
  year =         "1980",
}

The development of MINPACK is chronicled in Chapter 5 of this book:

@String{pub-PH     = "Pren{\-}tice-Hall"}
@String{pub-PH:adr = "Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458, USA"}

@Book{Cowell:SDM84,
  editor =       "Wayne R. Cowell",
  title =        "Sources and Development of Mathematical 
                 Software",
  publisher =    pub-PH,
  address =      pub-PH:adr,
  pages =        "xii + 404",
  year =         "1984",
  ISBN =         "0-13-823501-5",
  LCCN =         "QA76.95 .S68 1984",
  bibdate =      "Tue Dec 14 22:44:45 1993",
  series =       "Prentice-Hall Series in Computational 
                 Mathematics, Cleve Moler, Advisor",
}

Linking with locally-installed libraries

Unlike the later LINPACK and LAPACK libraries, which encode the argument precision in routine names, MINPACK uses the same names for single- and double-precision versions of each routine. It is thus imperative to pick one precision or the other, and then select the load library accordingly.

Fortran code can be linked with the MINPACK libraries like this:

    f77 -o fcode fcode.f -L/usr/local/lib -lminpacks    # <-- single
    f77 -o fcode fcode.f -L/usr/local/lib -lminpackd    # <-- double

Related libraries: EISPACK, LINPACK, and LAPACK

MINPACK is one of several other xxxpack projects, among them, EISPACK (for matrix eigenvalues and eigenvectors, and singular-value decompositions), LINPACK (for linear equations, least-squares, and singular-value decomposition), and LAPACK (for linear equations, least-squares, singular-value decomposition, and eigenvalue/eigenvector solution).