[petsc-dev] Is ./configure --help broken?

[Satish Balay]

On Thu, 15 Mar 2018, Stefano Zampini wrote:

> it seems we can no longer print the available configure options in master
> 
> [szampini at localhost petsc]$ ./configure --help
> ===============================================================================
>              Configuring PETSc to compile on your system
> 
> ===============================================================================

Hm - its just taking a long time.. The trigger is this change.

>>>>>>>>
603e7a67219475153ffb5c1693e4f8ee41f93af7 is the first bad commit
commit 603e7a67219475153ffb5c1693e4f8ee41f93af7
Author: Satish Balay <balay at mcs.anl.gov>
Date:   Thu Mar 8 20:02:30 2018 -0600

    rdict: attempt to workarround (not always reproduceable) error
    
    *** Using PETSC_DIR=/home/sandbox/petsc/petsc.next PETSC_ARCH=arch-linux-opt-misc ***
        No cached configure in RDict at /home/sandbox/petsc/petsc.next/arch-linux-opt-misc/lib/petsc/conf/RDict.db

:040000 040000 654ea5265523cbcbb50b1104be63b5c7899b4478 01384d9a268f7c89859c64f9f091bee066d47cda M	config
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

But I see script.py has code:

   if self.hasHelpFlag():
      self.argDB.readonly = True


This code is not getting triggered '-h'/--help - I don't know if this is the correct behavior. Matt?

Same slowdown with --with-packages-dir= [which behaves as help in one
case - and no-help in the other case].. And we have this chane to fix
its its misbehavior with --prefix

6ffe0648adde44dfc4a394659acd0d3e40176240

Satish