Request related to SLEPc

[Lisandro Dalcin]

I would like to add that, despite the new buildsystem if by far better
than the old one, PETSc has lost a nice feature of being able of being
installed in a central location for multiple $PETSC_ARCH's . This
feature is something I need, as I have to maintain the PETSc
intallation in our cluster, and I really need to have at least debug
and optimized builds because our applications can also be built in the
two modes.

Up to now, I'm using this rule: I pass to configure
--prefix=/usr/local/petsc/3.0.0/$PETSC_ARCH. But then, after
installation, the actual $PETSC_DIR should be passed something like
this: /usr/local/petsc/3.0.0/linux-gnu. In petsc4py I've tried to be
smart: it can build against the build directory, against an standard
install (I mean, when you pass --prefix=/path/to/petsc) or my special
rule (--prefix=/path/to/petsc/$PETSC_ARCH). Moreover, petsc4py can be
built against MANY different $PETSC_ARCH's, this way, before running
an script, you just setenv PETSC_ARCH=some-arch, and the Python import
machinery will internally load the appropriate extension module. This
is really, really nice, as I can run a small problem with debug libs,
and next run to a larger problem with optimized libs, with just
exporting an environmental variable.

When using the PETSc makefiles for other C/C++ apps, my special
install rule will not work the same than when building against the
PETSc build directory. Of course, I believe it should be easy to make
it work, but I'm thinking that many other users will run in the same
need.


Now, regarding the specific cuestions of Jose, I've noticed that the
header "petscconf.h" has a line #define PETSC_ARCH_NAME "XXX". I
cannot figure out how this define is generated (autoconf stuff?), but
if this define is guaranteed to be the same as the $PETSC_ARCH used to
build PETSc, then Jose perhaps could use a regex to look for a
meaningfull $PETSC_ARCH value.


On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 1:01 PM, Jose E. Roman <jroman at dsic.upv.es> wrote:
> SLEPc's configure.py uses the value of $PETSC_ARCH in order to setup
> everything for installation. We never had a $SLEPC_ARCH variable because our
> configure.py does not add platform-dependent functionality.
>
> Now the problem comes when PETSc has been configured with --prefix and
> installed with make install. In that case, $PETSC_ARCH is no longer
> available and SLEPc's configure.py is in trouble.
>
> A simple workaround would be that PETSc's configure (or make install) would
> add a variable (e.g. PETSC_ARCH_NAME) in file petscvariables. We parse this
> file so the arch name would be readily available even if $PETSC_ARCH is
> undefined.
>
> Can someone do this? Other solutions are welcome.
>
> Thanks,
> Jose
>
>



-- 
Lisandro Dalcín
---------------
Centro Internacional de Métodos Computacionales en Ingeniería (CIMEC)
Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química (INTEC)
Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET)
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