[petsc-users] PETSc and Windows 10

[Satish Balay]

To clarify - I would like to have a petsc test with MSYS2 working.

Previously I was lost with MSYS2 - so I stick with what I'm familiar with. However with your instructions - I'm hoping to make progress.

What I object to are suggestions (that come up regularly) of replacing what we currently have with:
- WSL2
- MSYS2

Satish


On Sun, 28 Jun 2020, Pierre Jolivet wrote:

> Hello Paolo,
> 
> > On 28 Jun 2020, at 4:19 PM, Satish Balay <balay at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
> > 
> > On Sun, 28 Jun 2020, Paolo Lampitella wrote:
> > 
> >>  1.  MSYS2+MinGW64 compilers. I understood that MinGW is not well supported, probably because of how it handles paths, but I wanted to give it a try, because it should be more “native” and there seems to be relevant examples out there that managed to do it. I first tried with the msys2 mpi distribution, produced the .mod file out of the mpi.f90 file in the distribution (I tried my best with different hacks from known limitations of this file as also present in the official MS-MPI distribution) and tried with my code without petsc, but it failed in compiling the code with some strange MPI related error (argument mismatch between two unrelated MPI calls in the code, which is non sense to me). In contrast, simple mpi tests (hello world like) worked as expected. Then I decided to follow this:
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> https://doc.freefem.org/introduction/installation.html#compilation-on-windows
> >> 
> 
> Sorry, our (FreeFEM) documentation is not the best…
> 
> MSYS2+MinGW64 is a fantastic tool to deploy .exe with PETSc.
> For example, in this .exe https://github.com/FreeFem/FreeFem-sources/releases/download/v4.6/FreeFEM-4.6-win7-64.exe <https://github.com/FreeFem/FreeFem-sources/releases/download/v4.6/FreeFEM-4.6-win7-64.exe>, we ship PETSc + SLEPc (in real + complex) with MS-MPI, hypre, MUMPS, ScaLAPACK, SuperLU, SuiteSparse, ParMETIS, METIS, SCOTCH, TetGen, HPDDM, all compiled by PETSc, needless to say :)
> There are some tricks, that you can copy/paste from https://github.com/FreeFem/FreeFem-sources/blob/master/3rdparty/ff-petsc/Makefile#L99-L120 <https://github.com/FreeFem/FreeFem-sources/blob/master/3rdparty/ff-petsc/Makefile#L99-L120>
> Basically, hypre + MinGW64 does not work if you don’t supply '--download-hypre-configure-arguments=--build=x86_64-linux-gnu --host=x86_64-linux-gnu' and all CMake packages need an additional flag as well:
> '--download-metis-cmake-arguments=-G "MSYS Makefiles"' '--download-parmetis-cmake-arguments=-G "MSYS Makefiles"' '--download-superlu-cmake-arguments=-G "MSYS Makefiles"'
> 
> This is tested on a daily basis on Windows 7 and Windows 10, so I’m a little puzzled by your MPI problems.
> I’d suggest you stick to MS-MPI (that’s what we use and it’s trivial to install on MSYS2 https://packages.msys2.org/package/mingw-w64-x86_64-msmpi <https://packages.msys2.org/package/mingw-w64-x86_64-msmpi>).
> 
> I’m not sure this is specific to PETSc, so feel free to have a chat in private.
> But I guess we can continue on the mailing list as well, it’s just that there is not much love for MSYS2 over here, sadly.
> 
> Thanks,
> Pierre
> 
> >> 
> >> but the exact same type of error came up (MPI calls in my code were different, but the error was the same). Trying again from scratch (i.e., without all the things I did in the beginning to compile my code) the same error came up in compiling some of the freefem dependencies (this time not even mpi calls).
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> As a side note, there seems to be an official effort in porting petsc to msys2 (https://github.com/okhlybov/MINGW-packages/tree/whpc/mingw-w64-petsc), but it didn’t get into the official packages yet, which I interpret as a warning
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >>  1.  Didn’t give a try to cross compiling with MinGw from Linux, as I tought it couldn’t be any better than doing it from MSYS2
> >>  2.  Didn’t try PGI as I actually didn’t know if I would then been able to make PETSc work.
> >> 
> >> So, here there are some questions I have with respect to where I stand now and the points above:
> >> 
> >> 
> >>     *   I haven’t seen the MSYS2-MinGw64 toolchain mentioned at all in official documentation/discussions. Should I definitely abandon it (despite someone mentioning it as working) because of known issues?
> > 
> > I don't have experience with MSYS2-MinGw64, However Pierre does - and perhaps can comment on this. I don't know how things work on the fortran side.
> > 
> >>     *   What about the PGI route? I don’t see it mentioned as well. I guess it would require some work on win32fe
> > 
> > Again - no experience here.
> > 
> >>     *   For my Cygwin-GNU route (basically what is mentioned in PFLOTRAN documentation), am I expected to then run from the cygwin terminal or should the windows prompt work as well? Is the fact that I require a second Enter hit and the mismanagement of serial executables the sign of something wrong with the Windows prompt?
> > 
> > I would think Cygwin-GNU route should work. I'll have to see if I can reproduce the issues you have.
> > 
> > Satish
> > 
> >>     *   More generally, is there some known working, albeit non official, route given my constraints (free+fortran+windows+mpi+petsc)?
> >> 
> >> Thanks for your attention and your great work on PETSc
> >> 
> >> Best regards
> >> 
> >> Paolo Lampitella
> 
>