add new version of Windows documentation that use pythonxy to have a simpler…

doc/install.txt

@@ -257,8 +257,96 @@ that fail on your platform (use the ``theano-users@googlegroups.com`` mailing li
 but note that you must first register to it, by going to `theano-users`_).
 
 
-Windows
--------
+Windows V1(bigger install, but simpler instruction + try instruction for gpu)
+----------------------------------------------
+
+1. If you don't have Python yet, I would recommend the Python(x,y)
+distribution. It is only one installation and contains the most
+important packages (NumPy, SciPy, IPython, Matplotlib, Mingw, Nose,
+etc.).
+
+2. Next you should install Mercurial and download Theano.
+   Command line version: http://mercurial.selenic.com/
+   One gui version(Tortoise hg): http://mercurial.selenic.com/downloads/
+   the command is
+   hg clone http://hg.assembla.com/theano Theano
+
+3. Theano needs 1 environment variable:
+  a) system variable PYTHONPATH with value C:\...\Theano
+(installation folder of theano)
+
+In the USERPROFILE directory 
+you should create a configuration file .theanorc with the following
+two lines:
+    [blas]
+    ldflags =
+(Create a text file in Windows Explorer and rename it from the DOS
+box: "ren xyz.txt .theanorc".)
+Space or non ascii caracter are not always supported. If that is your case,
+Set the environment variable 'THEANO_FLAGS' to the value 'blas.ldflags='
+
+This is enough to run Theano! It will use NumPy for dot products
+which, however, is pretty fast (see below).
+
+4.(Optional) If you want a faster and/or multithreaded BLAS library, you can
+compile GotoBLAS2. I did not try to compile ATLAS because I read that
+it is slower than Goto and very difficult to compile (especially for
+Windows).
+GotoBLAS can be downloaded after a simple registration (the most
+recent version is 1.13 right now). To compile it, you need to install
+two more programs: MSYS and Perl (for example ActivePerl). Actually,
+the GotoBLAS makefiles expect a full UNIX environment (like Cygwin)
+but the BLAS compilation seems to work with only MSYS and Perl. The
+LAPACK compilation fails, but we don't need it anyway.
+
+Compilation steps:
+a) Unpack GotoBLAS2 (using 7-zip or the MSYS tar command)
+b) open MSYS, change directory to GotoBLAS2 (cd command)
+c) type "quickbuild.win32 1>log.txt 2>err.txt"
+   The compilation takes a few minutes. Afterwards, you will find
+lots of error messages in the err.txt file, but you
+   should also find a libgoto2.dll file in the exports folder.
+d) Copy libgoto2.dll from the exports folder to mingw\bin and mingw
+\lib.
+e) Modify the .theanorc file: ldflags = -lgoto2
+   This setting can also be changed in Python for testing purposes:
+theano.config.blas.ldflags = ...
+
+4.1(Optional). To test the BLAS performance, you can run the script check_blas.py.
+For comparison I also downloaded and compiled the unoptimized standard
+BLAS. The results were the following (Intel Core2 Duo 1.86 GHz):
+       Standard BLAS: 166 sec (unoptimized, 1 thread)
+       NumPy: 48 sec (1 thread)
+       Goto2: 16 sec (2 threads)
+Conclusions:
+a) The unoptimized standard BLAS is very slow. Don't use it.
+b) The Windows binaries of NumPy were compiled with ATLAS and are
+surprisingly fast.
+c) GotoBLAS is even faster, in particular if you have several kernels.
+
+5(Optional) Gpu on Windows. Not sur it work! Can you report success/error on the `theano-user <http://groups.google.ca/group/theano-users?pli=1>`_ mailing list?
+
+Those are indication for 32 bits version of python, the one that come with pythonxy is 32 bits.
+
+Install cuda driver(32 bits on 32 bits Windows, idem for 64 bits).
+Install cuda toolkit 32 bits(even if you computer is 64 bits, must match the python installation version)
+Install cuda sdk 32 bits
+Test some pre-compiled example of the sdk
+Download Visual Studio 2008 Express(free, VS2010 not supported by nvcc 3.1, VS2005, not available for download, but supported by nvcc, the non free version should work too)
+Follow the instruction in the GettingStartedWindows.pdf file from cuda web site to compile cuda code with VS2008. If that don't work, you won't be able to compile gpu code with theano.
+
+Put into you PATH environment variable the directory where cl.exe is. In my case it is: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\bin
+
+Make sure the theano folder is in your PYTHONPATH environment variable.
+
+Then in theano do: import theano.sandbox.cuda
+
+That will print some error if their is an error to compile the first cuda file.
+
+Then run the theano cuda test file. In Windows command line (cmd.exe), run the program nosetests inside the theano repository. nosetests is installed by pythonxy.
+
+Windows V2(smaller install, but longer instruction)
+----------------------------------------------
 
 Running Theano under Windows is currently achieved by using the `MinGW
 <http://www.mingw.org>`__ port of the GCC compiler.