Why did you removed PETSC_ARCH_NAME variable in makefiles?

[Lisandro Dalcin]

On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 8:52 PM, Satish Balay <balay at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Nov 2009, Satish Balay wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 27 Nov 2009, Barry Smith wrote:
>>
>>
>> >    How does the gnu/autoconf world handle this. If you have two gnu/autoconf
>> > installed packages how can you tell they are compatible? You should use the
>> > same type of mechanism they use.  (what?, they don't have such a mechanism?
>> > Well then that is a limitation of the --prefix model and you have to live with
>> > that).
>>
>> The issue is not what the prefix model dictates. The issue is: do
>> slepc/petsc4py support both modes of install similar to PETSc. If not
>> why does PETSc need PETSC_ARCH for a prefix install? [if we are so
>> pure with supporting gnu/autoconf model?].
>
> I read the comment slightly out of context - please ignore.. [now I
> see you are refering to the "unique-identifier" as a sanity check
> issue]
>

Indeed. Right now I've already pushed fixes for the changes in
petsc-dev. Currently I can suport a prefix-PETSc+prefix-SLEPc, or
non-prefix-PETSc+non-prefix-SLEPc. The later is a non-issue, as
PETSC_ARCH more or less disambiguate incompatible builds and moreover
let runtime-selection of what variant to use (think of hacking Python
import path, though I did something a safer). However, mixes schemes
are harder to deal.

You know how easy is for end users (and the many naive sysadmins) out
there to make nasty mixups of incompatible stuff. I want to protect
from that, because I do not want to waste my time with mails arriving
at my inbox saying "hey Lisandro, I've installed petsc4py and
slepc4py, but i get Segmentation fault, do you know what could be
going on?"

This tread got long enough. Let's stop here, please. All us have more
important matters to spend our time. I think I'll end-up requiring
users to prefix-installs for both PETSc and SLEPc, or non-prefix also
for both, but never a mix.

-- 
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