[petsc-dev] prefix install and module file

[Barry Smith]

> On Jan 14, 2015, at 11:40 AM, Aron Ahmadia <aron at ahmadia.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 12:21 PM, Barry Smith <bsmith at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
> 
>    PETSc is organized around the ./configure --prefix  ; make ; make install model we don't have true support for pass the prefix only at the install time. It looks like Python distutils setup.py is based on only knowing the --prefix info at install time?
> 
> Yes, setup.py only needs to know prefix at install time, because the Python installation step is the only one that needs to know the prefix.
> 
> This is not hard to fix.  At configure time, write down into setup.cfg the location you'd like to install to.

   Hmm, the problem is that "you" don't decide where "you'd like to install to", that is a decision of distutils/setup.py and that information doesn't seem to even exist until install time. How is Python distutils/setup.py suppose to work with autoconf packages that use configure --prefix?

   I don't know what I am talking about so hope I am wrong.
  
  Barry

>  If no prefix command is given to setup at install time, it can look there.  This isn't currently in petsc4py, but it would be easy to add.