[petsc-dev] [petsc-maint #44001] Re: [petsc-users] Configuring PETSc with Intel compiler.

[Jed Brown]

On Tue, 30 Mar 2010 12:12:50 -0600, Matthew Knepley <petsc-maint at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
> I have been thinking about this. I want to create an entire module
> that just crafts responses to errors. Putting all that knowledge
> distributed throughout the code is crazy. Of course, this entails
> making an error ontology, etc. which will always break somehow, but I
> think its better than what we have now.
> 
> For example, we send this module
> 
>   InvalidCompiler, C++, (error, output, status), 'icc'
> 
> Its a simple matter to put in a check that recommends using 'icpc'
> instead.  In fact, we can even do more tests before giving that error,
> such as checking that it is the Intel compiler. I think this is a much
> cleaner separation of concerns.
> 
> Comments?

Alternatively, you could redirect to a search of a stackoverflow-like
site.  The ability to edit so that questions become more like FAQs with
well-described symptoms and solutions makes it a significantly better
model than a mailing list for troubleshooting.  There are a few open
source clones, this one looks promising.

  http://shapado.com

Repo at http://gitorious.org/shapado, sounds easy to set up.  I think
this would be easier to maintain than trying to integrate intelligent
responses into BuildSystem exception handling (however you planned to
implement it).

Jed