[petsc-dev] [Mike McQuaid] Re: [Homebrew/homebrew-core] PETSc: import from homebrew-science (#23598)

[Jed Brown]

"Smith, Barry F." <bsmith at mcs.anl.gov> writes:

>   So fix the damn script instead of just bitching about it! Jeepers, that is what open source is all about.

Yes, my last email was lazy.  But your criticism of Lisandro fixing it
in his packaging script (which he can just do without explaining to
anyone, and doesn't have to wait for a release) is much the same.

>   Or if it is so terrible and unfixable then write a new script. The
>   time wasted on mailing lists and arguing with package manager
>   developers would be better spent fixing installer code.

Agreed.  I think this would all be cleaner with a canonical, supported
way of querying whether a feature is enabled.  Right now we have
RDict.db (from within a Python script, but it takes a lot of work),
lib/petsc/conf/petscvariables from a makefile, and include/petscconf.h
from C source, all with different syntax.

It would be a lot less code to write the install directly in the
makefile, and would get permissions correct by using the 'install'
command.

I don't think examples should be installed by default.