itaps-parallel Pitch for folks to add Position Independent Code (PIC) by default

[Mark Miller]

Hi All,

I would like ask in the near future if folks wouldn't mind adding a
feature to their Make/Configure/Build/Whatever to turn ON position
independent code (PIC) by default.

Some codes already have a --with-pic configure option and that is
helpful. Other's don't have that option at all. But, as it turns out,
most (if not all) the lib<whatever>.a files in /usr/local/itaps are not
compiled with -fPIC. That means you cannot build a shared library
linking against them and pretty much means I have to re-build everything
there in order to link VisIt with those libs. 

So, I am making a pitch that a) folks add support for position
independent code and b) that it gets turned ON by default. That way,
whenever someone installs a lib, we'll be assured of getting a lib we
can build shared libraries against.

An alternative is to build shared libraries in addition to static.
However, I believe that may be harder for folks as PIC is just an
additional flag to compiler.

This is NOT a tutorial-pressing need. It is just something I'd like to
see if we can make start happening in Make/Configure/Build tools for our
various pieces of software.

Mark

-- 
Mark C. Miller, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
email: mailto:miller86 at llnl.gov
(M/T/W) (925)-423-5901 (!!LLNL BUSINESS ONLY!!)
(Th/F)  (530)-753-8511 (!!LLNL BUSINESS ONLY!!)