ENH: Added tests to the extra options read in

A simple test (distutils/testing/test_system_info.py)
to check that the options are read in correctly has been added.
This test has a few faults:

A) It does not allow strict library checks as that can be
   _very_ system dependent.
B) It compiles some simple C-programs but does currently not link
   them to a shared library.
C) As such the test does not check that the flags are actually used.

To circumvent this one should:

A) Make a library of the compiled sources.
B) Check that a runtime_library_dirs is working by checking
   with ldd
C) Make a preprocessor flag to check the output of two commands which
   should differ according to the flags in each block

I am not too much into the distutils compiler suite. So I have not
endeavoured on this path.

- The current test shows that the flags are read in by the standard system_info
  object and can thus be considered a "stable" solution.

- Added note of the 1.10 release schedule.

- Corrected the site.cfg.example, added runtime_library_dirs to
  the OpenBLAS example where it seems appropriate.

- Bugfix for the site.cfg.example (the [DEFAULT] block should be
  name [ALL])
  This might have lead to some confusion, but many of the libraries
  are linked explicitly by their own sections, hence it might not have
  been caught.

1 files changed, 15 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/doc/release/1.10.0-notes.rst b/doc/release/1.10.0-notes.rst
index f9d202ec3..c0645cfe2 100644
--- a/doc/release/1.10.0-notes.rst
+++ b/doc/release/1.10.0-notes.rst
@@ -8,6 +8,9 @@ Highlights
 ==========
 * numpy.distutils now supports parallel compilation via the --jobs/-j argument
   passed to setup.py build
+* numpy.distutils now supports additional customization via site.cfg to
+  control compilation parameters, i.e. runtime libraries, extra
+  linking/compilation flags.
 * Addition of *np.linalg.multi_dot*: compute the dot product of two or more
   arrays in a single function call, while automatically selecting the fastest
   evaluation order.
@@ -74,6 +77,18 @@ Also, the dtype.type of nested structured fields is now inherited.
 New Features
 ============
 
+Reading extra flags from site.cfg
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+Previously customization of compilation of dependency libraries and numpy 
+itself was only accomblishable via code changes in the distutils package.
+Now numpy.distutils reads in the following extra flags from each group of the
+site.cfg:
+  runtime_library_dirs (sets the runtime library directories to override
+    LD_LIBRARY_PATH)
+  extra_compile_args (add extra flags to the compilation of sources)
+  extra_link_args (add extra flags when linking libraries)
+This should, at least partially, complete user customization.
+
 *np.cbrt* to compute cube root for real floats
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 *np.cbrt* wraps the C99 cube root function *cbrt*.