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