[ET Trac] [Einstein Toolkit] #1532: The ET should handle "optional" thorns (OpenCL ect) in a better way.

[Einstein Toolkit]

#1532: The ET should handle "optional" thorns (OpenCL ect) in a better way.
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  Reporter:  rhaas        |       Owner:  eschnett           
      Type:  enhancement  |      Status:  reopened           
  Priority:  minor        |   Milestone:                     
 Component:  Cactus       |     Version:  development version
Resolution:               |    Keywords:                     
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Comment (by rhaas):

 > The alternative is to have an external agent (simfactory) responsible
 for modifying thornlists, which I don't like very much, as it leads to a
 lot of confusion, as most people think the thornlist they see is the one
 that Cactus uses, not a modified thornlist.  But this might be the best
 overall solution.  Rather than having an enabled-thorns entry, I think we
 should have a disabled-thorns entry; after all, it should be exceptional
 that thorns *fail* to work.  SimFactory could also add a message to the
 thornlist explaining that it has disabled the thorn, so that someone who
 digs into the configs directory to find out why a thorn is not compiled in
 will see the reason.  I still don't like the fact that users will be
 surprised that the thorn just isn't included in the executable, despite it
 being in the thornlist.  Maybe we can put a comment in the main ET
 thornlist next to each of these thorns which explains that it is disabled
 on some machines, and to look in the mdb file to see which ones. The
 downside of using disabled vs enabled is that thorns using libraries which
 are not available everywhere will cause trouble for new users unless we
 build those libraries ourselves.

 The thorns in question are the OpenCL thorns. They do in fact fail to run
 on most machines.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.einsteintoolkit.org/ticket/1532#comment:11>
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