#136: Don't rebuild external libraries so often --------------------------+------------------------------------------------- Reporter: eschnett | Owner: Type: enhancement | Status: new Priority: minor | Milestone: Component: Cactus | Version: Resolution: | Keywords: --------------------------+-------------------------------------------------
Comment (by hinder):
I think that is too complicated, and would get in the way of debugging. Is it true that using libraries from one compiler will not work with another? If I install HDF5 from source I'm pretty sure I have been able to use it with the intel compiler in the past, even though it will have built with GCC.
The problem which this ticket attempts to solve is that one does not want to build external libraries outside Cactus because it is sometimes complicated and Cactus already knows how to do it. Currently, the libraries are built within Cactus and stored in each configuration and are rebuilt whenever the configuration is rebuilt.
How about implementing a command which uses Cactus to build the libraries and install them outside the Cactus tree. For example,
make HDF5-buildlib prefix=$HOME/software
This would look for the thorn HDF5 and run its configuration script, telling it to build and install in a particular location. This is independent of any specific configuration.
If there are corner-cases where the build needs to be customised to a particular configuration, we would need there to be an association with a configuration for the build, and maybe the prefix would be modified to include the config name.