libeigen-3.3-beta1 is out of date and broken

[david ojeda]

libeigen-3.3-beta1 is out of date. As a beta version, it breaks a lot of the existing code. In particular, triangular views were left out of this release, and re-inserted in 3.3-beta2 (amongst a lot of bug fixes, see http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/index.php?title=ChangeLog#Eigen_3.3-beta2).

An example code that does not work in 3.3-beta1, but does work in the previous and next version of Eigen:

#include <iostream>
#include <Eigen/Dense>

using namespace std;
using namespace Eigen

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {

    MatrixXd X = MatrixXd::Random(3, 3);

    SelfAdjointEigenSolver<MatrixXd> solver(X.selfadjointView<Lower>());
    MatrixXd V = solver.eigenvectors();
    VectorXd D = solver.eigenvalues();

    cout << "X=\n" << X << endl;
    cout << "V=\n" << V << endl;
    cout << "D=\n" << D << endl;

    return 0;
}

This complains with:

In file included from /usr/include/eigen3/Eigen/Eigenvalues:38:0,
                 from /usr/include/eigen3/Eigen/Dense:7,
                 from mwe.cpp:3:
/usr/include/eigen3/Eigen/src/Eigenvalues/SelfAdjointEigenSolver.h: In instantiation of ‘Eigen::SelfAdjointEigenSolver<MatrixType>& Eigen::SelfAdjointEigenSolver<_MatrixType>::compute(const Eigen::EigenBase<OtherDerived>&, int) [with InputType = Eigen::SelfAdjointView<Eigen::Matrix<double, -1, -1>, 1u>; _MatrixType = Eigen::Matrix<double, -1, -1>]’:
/usr/include/eigen3/Eigen/src/Eigenvalues/SelfAdjointEigenSolver.h:168:14: required from ‘Eigen::SelfAdjointEigenSolver<_MatrixType>::SelfAdjointEigenSolver(const Eigen::EigenBase<OtherDerived>&, int) [with InputType = Eigen::SelfAdjointView<Eigen::Matrix<double, -1, -1>, 1u>; _MatrixType = Eigen::Matrix<double, -1, -1>]’
mwe.cpp:12:74: required from here
/usr/include/eigen3/Eigen/src/Eigenvalues/SelfAdjointEigenSolver.h:428:7: error: ‘const class Eigen::SelfAdjointView<Eigen::Matrix<double, -1, -1>, 1u>’ has no member named ‘triangularView’
   mat = matrix.template triangularView<Lower>();

So in short, the official version of the LTS is currently very buggy. How did a beta version got included in a LTS? I guess it's impossible to go back to 3.2.9 (the latest package on 15.10 is 3.2.5), so could we at least bump it to the 3.3-beta2?

Ubuntu release:
Description: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS
Release: 16.04

Package version:
libeigen3-dev:
  Installed: 3.3~beta1-2
  Candidate: 3.3~beta1-2
  Version table:
 *** 3.3~beta1-2 500
        500 http://fr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/universe amd64 Packages
        500 http://fr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/universe i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[david ojeda (davidojeda)]

Updated correct name of package

[david ojeda (davidojeda)]

This was marked Fix Released... could you please explain why? There is no fix currently available for 16.04

[david ojeda (davidojeda)]

Changing back to New. There is no fix available and there are no details of the previous status change 2-3 months ago.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Evgenii Frolov (frol-onn)]

This bug still affects me on Ubuntu 16.04.
I can't use this version of the lib for my work on ubuntu!
It breaks my code compilation.

I have in my program the same situation as mentioned here: https://github.com/cole-trapnell-lab/cufflinks/issues/61

[Graham Inggs (ginggs)]

eigen3 3.3~beta2-2 was released in Ubuntu 16.10

[david ojeda (davidojeda)]

Are we going to continue this tennis match of moving back and forward from new/confirmed to fix released?

Yes, there is a fix for this bug. It is available for for 16.10 but it is *not* available for 16.04.

16.04 being a LTS, should have its own fix. Otherwise the current workarounds for 16.04 users is to upgrade to 16.10 (and they would no longer be using a LTS), or add a PPA with the fixed version, or manually download and install Eigen.