[petsc-users] building PETSc-3.2p5 with openMPI-1.5.4 under Windows

[NovA]

Hello everybody!

Recently I've tried to build PETSc-3.2p5 under WindowsXP-x64 with
openMPI-1.5.4 binary package using Intel C++ 11.1 compiler. I've got
couple of strange problems, but succeeded to resolve them. I just want
to share the solution. Hope, this could help to improve documentation
or configuration procedure.

After a long stage of trial-and-error I managed to provide the
./configure.py with options that worked. Under cygwin the
configuration lasts forever... Anyway, the configure stage finished
successfully, but the building stage brought the following problems.

(1) Building stops at src/sys/viewer/impls/ascii/filev.c with the
syntax errors in mpi.h in the lines:
OMPI_DECLSPEC  MPI_Fint MPI_Comm_c2f(MPI_Comm comm);
and
OMPI_DECLSPEC  MPI_Comm MPI_Comm_f2c(MPI_Fint comm);

Tedious investigation showed that it was resulted from substitutions
in petscfix.h:
#define MPI_Comm_f2c(a) (a)
#define MPI_Comm_c2f(a) (a)

And these definitions came in turn from "TEST configureConversion" of
configure.py. The test was indeed failed with unresolved external
symbol "ompi_mpi_comm_world" (NOT the one it verifies). That just
because not all openMPI libraries were specified in the command line
(only -lmpi)...

Therefore the very cause of the problem is the incorrect options for
./configure concerning MPI. I used "--with-mpi-dir=..." and
"--with-cc="win32fe icl"" (win32fe wrapper can't handle mpicc.exe). I
thought they should correctly configure openMPI includes and
libraries, but they did not for the latter. Silently.

So my solution is to remove --with-mpi-dir configure option and
replace it with --with-mpi-include="$MPI_DIR/include",
--with-mpi-lib="[libmpi.lib,libopen-pal.lib,libopen-rte.lib]" (no
spaces), --CC_LINKER_FLAGS="-L$MPI_DIR/lib", --CFLAGS="-DOMPI_IMPORTS
-DOPAL_IMPORTS -DORTE_IMPORTS". The values are taken from "mpicc.exe
--showme".


(2) Building stops at src/sys/error/fp.c with the errors that
integer/pointer expression expected in the line
if (feclearexcept(FE_ALL_EXCEPT)) ...

It seems the reason it that "Intel C++ 11.1" provide "fenv.h" header
which is detected by the ./configure and PETSC_HAVE_FENV_H is defined.
But the function declared in intel's fenv.h as void:
extern void _FENV_PUBAPI feclearexcept (int excepts) ;

For now I just commented out PETSC_HAVE_FENV_H in petscconf.h. Is
there a better way to workaround this?

(3) Building stops at src\sys\objects\pinit.c with the errors
"expression must have a constant value" concerning MPI_COMM_NULL.
I already reported this in the mail-list a year and half ago for
openMPI-1.4.1 and PETSc-3.1. Then Satish Balay filled the bug to
openMPI developers ( https://svn.open-mpi.org/trac/ompi/ticket/2368 ).
Unfortunately, the ticket is still open and workaround for PETSc is
the same: "replacing all occurrences of 'MPI_COMM_NULL' in pinit.c
with '0'". Probably it's worth to refresh that ticket somehow.


Best regards,
  Andrey