ENV versus site.cfg for LAPACK

WIth numpy 1.10.1 and reference (netlib) lapack installed to:

/usr/lib64/libreflapack.so -> libreflapack.so.3
/usr/lib64/libreflapack.so.3 -> libreflapack.so.3.6.0
/usr/lib64/libreflapack.so.3.6.0

Everything seems good:

% LAPACK=/usr/lib64/libreflapack.so python setup.py config > output.txt
% tail -15 output.txt 

lapack_info:
Replacing _lib_names[0]=='lapack' with 'reflapack'
Replacing _lib_names[0]=='reflapack' with 'reflapack'
Replacing _lib_names[0]=='reflapack' with 'reflapack'
Replacing _lib_names[0]=='reflapack' with 'reflapack'
  FOUND:
    libraries = ['reflapack', 'reflapack']
    library_dirs = ['/usr/lib64']
    language = f77
    runtime_library_dirs = ['/usr/lib64']

  NOT AVAILABLE

running config

However, trying to recreate that with a simple site.cfg file fails (I’ve also tried various permutations of library_dirs and others to no avail):

% cat site.cfg
[lapack]
libraries=reflapack
% python setup.py config > output.txt
% cat output.txt
*****snip******
lapack_info:
  libraries lapack not found in ['/usr/lib64']
  NOT AVAILABLE
******snip*****

I think a hint to the issue is in the working output.txt file above: when it says Replacing _lib_names[0]=='lapack' with 'reflapack'. My guess is that for some reason (deep in numpy/distutils/system_info.py) the LAPACK env variable causes the library name to be changed, but the [lapack] section does not.

[mattip]

it seems site.cfg is woefully under-documented, the closest I could find is using env values but does not mention site.cfg. Closing this and opening #14286

[bsipocz]

It seems that this question has been answered, maybe close the issue?