some issues with BuildSystem and LANG

Wed Apr 29 19:06:41 CDT 2009

Sorry, I have very little knowledge about locales, but...

1) The only thing that probably work in all cases is LANG=C

2) I'm not sure if a os.setenv will make child processes to inherit
the LANG setting in all the cases.

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 2:58 PM, Satish Balay <balay at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
> I guess somewhere in configure we should do:
>
> os.setenv('LANG','en_US')
> or use 'en_US.utf8'
>
> The issues I don't know how to adress are:
>
> - will this break some OS  where this is unknown..
> - Do we have to use the same LANG in makefiles - during buildtime?
>
> I guss - I can do the following to petsc-dev - and see if someone
> complains..
>
> diff -r f7644879c9e5 config/configure.py
> --- a/config/configure.py       Tue Apr 28 16:06:47 2009 -0500
> +++ b/config/configure.py       Wed Apr 29 12:56:45 2009 -0500
> @@ -286,5 +286,6 @@
>   move_configure_log(framework)
>
>  if __name__ == '__main__':
> +  os.setenv('LANG','en_US.utf8')
>   petsc_configure([])
>
>
> Satish
>
>
> On Wed, 29 Apr 2009, Barry Smith wrote:
>
>>
>>   I asked this before and never got a good answer.
>>
>>    How come config/configure.py doesn't somehow turn on the LANG to english
>> itself!!!!!
>> When config/configure.py runs things it runs them in new subshells, there
>> should be some
>> way to make those new subshells have the LANG english.
>>
>>    It is not reasonable that we'll handle messages in all languages!
>>
>>   Barry
>>
>> On Apr 29, 2009, at 10:31 AM, Matthew Knepley wrote:
>>
>> > On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 10:19 AM, Lisandro Dalcin <dalcinl at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Today I had a hard time helping a student trying to build PETSc on a
>> > Ubuntu box he has at home... For some unknow reason, the configure
>> > step let pass '-PIC' as a valid GCC flag... The relevant parts of the
>> > configure log are shown below... (the <...> represent uninteresting
>> > output)
>> >
>> > TEST checkPIC from
>> > config.setCompilers(/home/nisi/petsc-3.0.0-p5/config/BuildSystem/config/setCompilers.py:807)
>> > TESTING: checkPIC from
>> > config.setCompilers(config/BuildSystem/config/setCompilers.py:807)
>> > Determine the PIC option for each compiler
>> >      - There needs to be a test that checks that the functionality
>> > is actually working
>> >       Pushing language C
>> >     Trying C compiler flag -PIC
>> > <.....>
>> > sh: gcc  -o conftest  -PIC    conftest.o
>> > Executing: gcc  -o conftest  -PIC    conftest.o
>> > sh:
>> > Possible ERROR while running linker: gcc: no se reconoce la opción '-PIC'
>> > output: error message = {gcc: no se reconoce la opción '-PIC'
>> > }
>> > <.....>
>> >       Valid C linker flag -PIC
>> >     Adding C compiler flag -PIC
>> > sh: gcc -c -o conftest.o  -PIC   conftest.c
>> > Executing: gcc -c -o conftest.o  -PIC   conftest.c
>> > sh:
>> > Possible ERROR while running compiler: error message = {gcc: no se
>> > reconoce la opción '-PIC'
>> > }
>> > <.....>
>> > Added C compiler flag -PIC
>> >
>> > What's going on?? My guess was that BuildSystem is not prepared for
>> > Spanish words :-)
>> >
>> > What a good guess this is exactly right. I will patch BuildSystem-dev now.
>> >
>> >
>> > I asked the guy to start the whole process again, but this time begin doing:
>> >
>> > $ export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
>> >
>> > and now things worked out of the box...
>> >
>> > Is this  issue documented somewhere? There is anything we can do to
>> > improve this? What is the minimal Python version BuildSystem should
>> > require? Scanning stdout/stderr for guessing failures is really
>> > fragile...
>> >
>> > You would think, but its not nearly as fragile as trusting a stupid
>> > compiler. Compiler
>> > people are the most stubborn jackasses in computing. They refuse to consider
>> > anything
>> > but
>> >
>> >  1) command line input
>> >
>> >  2) screen message output
>> >
>> > Why bother with APIs when you can have text? No compiler that I know of
>> > produces
>> > error codes for warnings, including gcc, so we have no way other than
>> > scanning the
>> > output to determine what options are valid (certainly not an interface call
>> > for this).
>> > After working on this stuff for a few years, I really really hate people who
>> > build compilers.
>> > Some more than others, but all of them are bad.
>> >
>> > Thanks for letting me have my rant time this morning,
>> >
>> >   Matt
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > 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)
>> > PTLC - Güemes 3450, (3000) Santa Fe, Argentina
>> > Tel/Fax: +54-(0)342-451.1594
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > 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
>>
>

-- 
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)
PTLC - Güemes 3450, (3000) Santa Fe, Argentina
Tel/Fax: +54-(0)342-451.1594