#1532: simfactories enabled-thorns does not check if a to be enabled thorn is actually present -------------------------+-------------------------------------------------- Reporter: rhaas | Owner: eschnett Type: defect | Status: closed Priority: major | Milestone: Component: SimFactory | Version: development version Resolution: fixed | Keywords: -------------------------+-------------------------------------------------- Changes (by knarf):

* status: new => closed * resolution: => fixed

Comment:

I disabled these on bluewaters. Currently, this option should probably only be used on a user-by-user basis, and not as default. Even if a thorn is present a user might not want to compile it in a configuration, so even then I don't think doing just that would be correct.

#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: --------------------------+------------------------------------------------- Changes (by knarf):

* priority: major => minor * type: defect => enhancement * component: SimFactory => Cactus

Old description:

if one uses the default ET thornlist for download then transfers the cechkout to eg bluewaters then tries to build there then the build fails since thorns are not found: {{{

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Warnings were generated during execution of the CST

CST error 1: -> Missing thorn CactusExamples/WaveToyOpenCL

CST error 2: -> Missing thorn CactusUtils/Accelerator

CST error 3: -> Missing thorn CactusUtils/OpenCLRunTime

CST error 4: -> Missing thorn ExternalLibraries/OpenCL

CST error 5: -> Missing thorn McLachlan/ML_WaveToy_CL }}} Reading the resolution to #919 it seesm as if enabled-thorns should have been removed from the mdb but seems to not have been.

I think enabled-thorns should be either removed and/or simfactory should check before activating (uncommenting) a thorn in the thornlist that the activated thorn actually exists.

New description:

Currently, some thorns within the ET only work on some machines (for good reasons), and are thus disabled by default in the thornlist. This has several problems (they are not checked out by default, nor then synced to machines where they are supported and might be needed). We need to improve this.

We could find a way to tag these as "optional" and then have a corresponding tag per machine that can enable them, if they are present. This way (at least most of them) could always be checked out, but Cactus would skip their compilation if they are not present, or not supported on that machine (indicated by something "missing" in the option list probably).

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Comment:

True. This isn't really a simfactory problem though. It already starts with GetComponents, so let's change the ticket accordingly.

#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 eschnett):

An empty thorn list would work.

#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 hinder):

If the thorns are commented in the thornlist, how do they get checked out?

I think that when someone downloads the ET, everything should be downloaded. It should then all be synced to remote machines. What we need to decide is at what point the thorns which don't work there acknowledge this fact. When running tests etc, I don't want to have to do something special for certain machines.

One solution is for the thorns to complain at run-time, but only if they are used. So if I have an OpenCL thorn, Cactus would still successfully build the thornlist, but at runtime, if I try to activate the thorn, it will complain that it does not work on this machine. This would have the effect that tests would fail rather than just not be run, and this option might be difficult to implement.

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.

This is not an easy problem to solve.

#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 eschnett):

Empty thornlists: Simfactory does not add thorns to the thorn list, it enables them in the sense of removing the comment character. If a thorn is not there (and commented out), it will not be added.

#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.