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

[Satish Balay]

On Fri, 16 Mar 2018, Matthew Knepley wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 9:30 AM, Satish Balay <balay at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
> 
> > 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?
> >
> 
> Satish, I don't think this can be our fix. This writes to disk every time a
> value is changed. We need to know
> why the forced write at the end of configure was not working. This makes
> everything forced.

Sure - there has been random corruption of Rdict.db for many years and
we haven't been able to track it down.  This change - with the force
write at all times - is my attempt to avoid that corruption.

I think in the prior discussion - you mentioned 'Rdict.db is not being
used as per the original design intent'.

If so - perhaps it should be removed? or written to only once - at the
end? [or decouple 'make install' from it? I couldn't figure out this
one.]

Satish

> 
> I will look at why readonly is not working.
> 
>   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
> >
> 
> 
> 
>