[petsc-dev] MacOS firewall annoyance while running tests + solution

[Hapla Vaclav]

> On 28 Aug 2020, at 22:47, Jed Brown <jed at jedbrown.org> wrote:
> 
> "Hapla  Vaclav" <vaclav.hapla at erdw.ethz.ch> writes:
> 
>> On MacOS, maybe you also have lots of firewall popups appearing/disappearing when running tests like
>>  Do you want the application "ex29" to accept incoming network connections?
> 
> Is there a way to express that the application does not need (should not accept) incoming connections?

Oh yes, hadn't thought about before, but it's surely better to _block_ the incoming connections - feels safer for a user at least.

But the way is the same, requiring sudo:

sudo /usr/libexec/ApplicationFirewall/socketfilterfw --add $PETSC_DIR/$PETSC_ARCH/tests/dm/impls/plex/tests/ex9
sudo /usr/libexec/ApplicationFirewall/socketfilterfw --block $PETSC_DIR/$PETSC_ARCH/tests/dm/impls/plex/tests/ex9

Funny enough, these commands don't fail without sudo but they have no effect.

> 
> Normalizing sudo during build/testing seems really bad.

I agree. It shouldn't be a normal part of the makefile. That's why I have been hesitant to create a MR. I think we could
1. just add an FAQ entry - but the patch can become out-of-date pretty quickly, and instructions without a patch are gonna be tedious
2. activate this part conditionally, requiring a user's action such as passing a very special variable to makefile
3. put it into a separate makefile and add a commented out include into gmakefile.test, so that the user has to explicitly uncomment the inclusion - or something like that
4. something else?

Vaclav