[ET Trac] [Einstein Toolkit] #136: Don't rebuild external libraries so often

[Einstein Toolkit]

#136: Don't rebuild external libraries so often
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  Reporter:  eschnett     |       Owner:        
      Type:  enhancement  |      Status:  review
  Priority:  minor        |   Milestone:        
 Component:  Cactus       |     Version:        
Resolution:               |    Keywords:        
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Comment (by bmundim):

 What my patch does is to provide a way out of the default behaviour,
 but it does *not* change the default behaviour. The way I usually do
 when building the libraries is as follows:

 1) set in my .cactus/config the path where I want the library built
 and the BUILD statement to force it to be built. For example, I used
 the following configuration for GSL to be built in my laptop with gcc:

 GSL_DIR = BUILD
 GSL_INSTALL_DIR = /home/bruno/local/gcc4.4.1/gsl-1.14

 2) Once I have built them, I change my .cactus/config file to reflect
 their location and comment out the two lines above:

 #GSL_DIR = BUILD
 #GSL_INSTALL_DIR = /home/bruno/local/gcc4.4.1/gsl-1.14
 GSL_DIR = /home/bruno/local/gcc4.4.1/gsl-1.14

 3) All other configurations that are built with gcc, I use the latest
 version of my .cactus/config file.

 This has worked well for me so far. I didn't think hard of any corner
 case and I didn't think of having this process automated. I hope it is
 clearer how I did/do. Now your points:

 >If two Cactus configurations use the same install locations, then the
 library there will be built twice -- the first will silently be
 overwritten

 I didn't run into this problem, since once I build the libraries I set its
 location
 in the .cactus/config file as I described above. However, we could work on
 making this
 more robust.

 >If you clean a configuration or remove it, and then rebuild it, the GSL
 library will be built again, even if it already exists there

 It won't be built again, because at this time I have already set GSL_DIR
 to the library
 location. Again we may want to make it more robust, maybe be by assigning
 GSL_DIR = GSL_INSTALL_DIR *after* the library is installed.

 >If you install GSL into the Cactus source tree, the same thing happens.

 This is true. Remember that I didn't change the default. I just provided a
 way out of it.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.einsteintoolkit.org/ticket/136#comment:23>
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