(all versions up to and including 20060925). The issue has been
reported to Intel, along with a small [non-MPI] test program that
reproduces the problem (the test program and the OMPI C++ bindings
work fine with Intel C++ 9.0 and many other C++ compilers).
In short, a static initializer for a global variable (i.e., its
constructor is fired before main()) that takes as an argument a
reference to a typedef'd type will simply get the wrong value in the
argument. Specifically:
{{{
namespace MPI {
Intracomm COMM_WORLD(MPI_COMM_WORLD);
}
}}}
The constructor for MPI::Intracomm should get the value of
&ompi_mpi_comm_world. It does not; it seems to get a random value.
As mandated by MPI-2, annex B.13.4, for C/C++ interoperability, the
prototype for this constructor is:
{{{
class Intracomm {
public:
Intracomm(const MPI_Comm& data);
};
}}}
Experiments with icpc 9.1/20060925 have shown that removing the
reference from the prototype makes it work (!). After lots of
discussions about this issue with a C++ expert (Doug Gregor from IU),
we decided the following (cut-n-paste from an e-mail):
-----
> So here's my question: given that OMPI's MPI_<CLASS> types are all
> pointers, is there any legal MPI program that adheres to the above
> bindings that would fail to compile or work properly if we simply
> removed the "&" from the second binding, above?
I don't know of any way that a program could detect this change. FWIW,
the C++ committee has agreed that implementation of the C++ standard
library are allowed to decide arbitrarily between const& and by-value.
If they don't care, MPI users won't care.
When you remove the '&', I suggest also removing the "const". It is
redundant, but can trigger some strange name mangling in Sun's C++
compiler.
-----
So with this change:
* we now work again with the Intel 9.1 compiler
* our C++ bindings do not exactly conform to the MPI-2 spec, but
valid/legal MPI C++ apps cannot tell the difference (i.e., the
functionality is the same)
This commit was SVN r12514.
