Sorry to weigh in late...
It would be a deterrent, although perhaps surmountable. What would
really be nasty is if the additional tool required additional tools itself.
I am using RedHat 9 linux, but thinking of going to Fedora or RH Enterprise.
-- Jonathan
Jeff Squyres wrote:
> LAM users --
>
> If you could indulge me for a minute, I'd like to take a poll of all you
> "regular users" out there. As you know, we're working heavily on Open
> MPI (http://www.open-mpi.org/). We anticipate a first stable release in
> 1Q 2005.
>
> SHORT VERSION:
> --------------
>
> 1. If Open MPI uses a build system that requires extra tools (such as
> cmake or jam or ...) to be installed in order to be built from source,
> would this be a deterrent to you installing Open MPI from a source tarball?
>
> 2. If you answered yes to #1, what kind of system will you want to use
> Open MPI on? I.e., what [specific] flavor of system (architecture,
> operating system and version, etc.) would we need to provide a binary
> version of Open MPI for you to install?
>
>
> LONGER VERSION:
> ---------------
>
> One of the LAM technologies that was ported to Open MPI was the
> configure/build system. It relies heavily upon GNU Autoconf, Automake,
> and Libtool. It's been improved quite a bit from the original LAM code
> but is essentially the same essence. The major advantage of this system
> is that it is trivial for a user to install -- you untar it and then run
> "./configure ... ; make all install". Users do not need any additional
> tools to be installed (aside from "make" and a set of compilers, which
> most users already have).
>
> However, it still has a lot of shortcomings (at least from a developer's
> perspective). One big drawback: it's slow. It takes quite a long time
> to compile Open MPI (and LAM). Users don't generally care about this
> (right?) because they only do it once, but it does cost a lot of lost
> developer time. In short: we're interested in making the
> configure/build system better, stronger, and have fewer carbs.
>
> As such, we're investigating other build systems, such as cmake and
> jam. These are fine systems, but they have one critical difference from
> AC/AM/LT: users who want to build and install Open MPI will have to have
> cmake/jam/whatever installed. Specifically, before you can build Open
> MPI from source, you would need to download and install cmake/jam/whatever.
>
> The debate is raging between the Open MPI developers :-), so I thought
> I'd ask real users what you thought. Would it be a problem for you to
> install some secondary tool to build Open MPI? And if so, what systems
> would you need binaries for?
>
> Keep in mind -- none of this has been decided yet. We may go with
> cmake/jam/whatever, or we may stay with AM/AM/LT. Indeed, if people ask
> for binaries for too many systems, it's questionable as to whether we
> could actually provide them all, anyway. The point here is that I want
> to find out what you want/need. Specific user requests will help us
> make a decision balanced between your input and developer needs.
>
> Many thanks!
>
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