Make MXNet deploy it's own distribution

Scenario

Currently, MXNet were built along with different language bindings such as Scala. However, as a software design aspective, Python and Scala are cosumer of MXNet itself. Any language binding should build on top of its own distribution. In that case, it will be easier for user to switch between different mxnet versions and language binding versions. Considering the fact that MXNet are available for more platforms, we cannot create each of them a single Scala package.

Tensorflow currently publish their distribution jar with only so files in. It widely used for customers for Andriod, Arm and all different platforms.

Design

We are going to publish standalone maven packages for MXNet native library (libmxnet.so)

Packages to release

All these native packages will be released under maven groupId: org.apache.mxnet
Each cuda and mkl varieties will have their own artifact id
Different operating system will share the same artifact id, with specific classifiers:

linux-x86_64
osx-x86_64
win-x86_64
linux-arm

artifactId	pip release name	Type	Linux	OSX	Windows	Android
mxnet-native-cu101mkl	mxnet-cu101mkl	GPU	Y	N	Y	N
mxnet-native-cu101	mxnet-cu101	GPU	Y	N	Y	N
mxnet-native-cu92mkl	mxnet-cu92mkl	GPU	Y	N	Y	N
mxnet-native-cu92	mxnet-cu92	GPU	Y	N	Y	N
mxnet-native-cu90mkl	mxnet-cu90mkl	GPU	Y	N	Y	N
mxnet-native-cu90	mxnet-cu90	GPU	Y	N	Y	N
mxnet-native-mkl	mxnet-mkl	CPU	Y	Y	Y	N
mxnet-native-min	mxnet	CPU	Y	Y	Y	?

Layout in release jar

Native shared libraries

Each mxnet shared library should use platform specific file name extension.
Besides libmxnet, other dependencies should also be packaged into .jar file
cuda library will NOT be part of the jar.

Location in the jar

All shared libraries will be put under /native/lib folder.

Properties file

The shared libraries must be cached on disk first at java runtime. To improve native library loading performance and error case validation, we added a mxnet.properties file int /native/lib folder.

The properties file contains following information:

version: the version with build number that can unique identify each mxnet native library build.
libraries: a comma delimited list of all files need to be cached on disk.

Here list files for each jar

	Linux	OSX	Windows	Android
-mkl	/native/lib/mxnet.properties /native/lib/libmxnet.so /native/lib/libgfortran.so.3 /native/lib/libquadmath.so.0 /native/lib/libiomp5.so /native/lib/libmklml_intel.so /native/lib/libmkldnn.so.0	/native/lib/mxnet.properties /native/lib/libmxnet.dylib /native/lib/libiomp5.dylib /native/lib/libmklml.dylib /native/lib/libmkldnn.0.dylib	/native/lib/mxnet.properties /native/lib/libmxnet.dll
-min	/native/lib/mxnet.properties /native/lib/libmxnet.so /native/lib/libgfortran.so.3 /native/lib/libquadmath.so.0	/native/lib/mxnet.properties /native/lib/libmxnet.dylib	/native/lib/mxnet.properties /native/lib/libmxnet.dll	/native/lib/mxnet.properties /native/lib/libmxnet.so

Example:

Following is a sample pom.xml file for consuming mxnet native library

pom.xml

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.apache.mxnet</groupId>
      <artifactId>mxnet-native-mkl</artifactId>
      <version>1.5.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
      <classifier>osx-x86_64</classifier>
      <scope>runtime</scope>
    </dependency>

  </dependencies>
</project>

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