[petsc-dev] Fwd: [petsc-users] cannot find 'libz.a' when configuring

[Satish Balay]

On Thu, 11 Apr 2013, Matthew Knepley wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 7:53 PM, Satish Balay <balay at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
> 
> > How do we handle these packages with complicated dependencies [they
> > are complicated as petsc dependencies?]
> >
> > In this report hdf5 was built with szip-2.1 and zlib-1.2.7. So how
> > does petsc configure automatically detect this?
> >
> > And I've recently used the following for hdf5/necddf5 on fusion [with
> > the extra implicit depenceny of hdf5 on zlib, and netcdf5 on hdf5 from
> > within configure]
> >
> >     '--with-hdf5-lib=-L/soft/hdf5/1.8.6-parallel/lib -lhdf5_hl -lhdf5
> > -lgpfs',
> >
> >     '--with-netcdf-lib=-L/soft/netcdf/4.1.1-parallel/lib -lnetcdff
> > -lnetcdf -L/usr/kerberos/lib64 -lcurl -ldl -lgssapi_krb5 -lkrb5 -lk5crypto
> > -lcom_err -lidn -lssl -lcrypto -lz',
> >
> > Yeah - things work if the user knows the dependencies and the link
> > command for those dependencies - and specify it to petsc configure as
> > above. But I'm not sure how to autodetect this.
> >
> > Also currently -lz is handled in package.py with
> > 'self.needsCompression' similar to 'self.needsMath' with the detection
> > of -lz in libraires.py:checkCompression() - but one can't specify a
> > --with-zlib-lib option this way. I guess this part can be fixed by
> > migrating it a standalone package z.py. [And somehow handle the
> > optional part of this dependency for hdf5]
> 
> 
> We already have a mechanism for this. Lots of packages depend on
> other packages. This is just screwed up in the case of libz because
> someone (maybe me) did not want to write an entire package file for
> it, and instead copped out with the needsCompression.

Currently we handle 'mandatory' dependencies properly - and optional
>depencencies for --download-pakcage somewhat - but not for
--with-package-dir

For hdf5 - handling just zlib.py is not sufficient. Do we add szip.py,
zlib.py, gpfs.py [and perhaps more] for hdf5? And somehow use these as
optionaly when testing for user provided --with-hdf5? Which package
currently implements this usage [to check for this optionaly
dependency - and give the correct error]?

i.e In this case - when the user specified --with-hdf5-dir option. We
had to print an error.:
 * please provide --with-zlib-dir and --with-szip-dir options.
[For a different user - with the same usage - there would be no error]

For netcdf above one would have kerbros.py, curl.py and perhaps more?

Satish