[petsc-users] configuring petsc without downloading packages

[Barry Smith]

> On Oct 22, 2015, at 1:42 PM, David Liu <daveliu at mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hi, I have a simple question that I could not find a comprehensive answer anywhere on the website or manual, though I found examples of what I'm trying to do. Say I want to build a version of PETSc with some external package, such as MUMPS or SuperLU_DIST. I can do this by using flags such as "--download-superlu_dist" when I am configuring. However, what if I already have SuperLU_DIST, say either by installing it by myself from the SuperLU_DIST source, or from a previous configuration of PETSc, i.e. with downloaded files sitting in ${PETSC_DIR}/${PETSC_ARCH}/externalpackages? How can I save the trouble of re-downloading a package that I already have? For MPI, I can specify using "--with-mpi-dir", or I can simply have mpirun and mpicc, etc in my path. But is there a standard way to do this for external packages that you usually download?


   It is the same. --with-mumps-dir etc.

   Note that each release of PETSc only works with one release of external packages so if you don't use the --download option you need to verify that you are using the correct release of the package. You can look in config/BuildSystem/config/packages/xxx.py to find what version of the external package xxx we support.

  Barry

> I vaguely recall reading somewhere that you can simply do
> 
> --download-superlu_dist=${PATH_TO_SUPERLU_DIST}
> 
> but that notation obviously seems a little weird.