[petsc-dev] Why does configure need 30 minutes to remind me about --known-mpi-shared-libraries?

[Matthew Knepley]

On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 12:15 PM, Jed Brown <jed at jedbrown.org> wrote:

>
> *******************************************************************************
>          UNABLE to CONFIGURE with GIVEN OPTIONS    (see configure.log for
> details):
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Must give a default value for known-mpi-shared-libraries since executables
> cannot be run
>
> *******************************************************************************
>
>
> Matt, is there something consistent and maintainable that we could do so
> that all the checks for issues like this run immediately, before
> compilation tests, so that users can get error messages in a reasonable
> amount of time?  Few things are more frustrating than waiting so long to
> get a trivial error message, then start the entire process over again.
>

Configure is run in two passes. First we run

  setupDependencies()

for all nodes, and the we run

  configure()

in  topological order on the DAG. Checks which do not depend on
dependencies can all
be run in the setupDependencies(). I am going to move all the downloads
here, which will catch errors quickly, and also allow us to asynchronously
download while other tests run,

Can you put your check there. Perhaps we should rename the call. It was
originally just for setting up the DAG.

   Matt


> And/or, what about caching results so that re-running after adding this
> flag would be fast?  (It scares me too, but I consider configure time to
> be a major usability issue.)
>

Definitely not.

   Matt

-- 
What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their
experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their
experiments lead.
-- Norbert Wiener
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