openmpi/HACKING

Copyright (c) 2004-2005 The Trustees of Indiana University and Indiana
                        University Research and Technology
                        Corporation.  All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 2004-2005 The University of Tennessee and The University
                        of Tennessee Research Foundation.  All rights
                        reserved.
Copyright (c) 2004-2005 High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart, 
                        University of Stuttgart.  All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 2004-2005 The Regents of the University of California.
                        All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 2008      Cisco Systems, Inc.  All rights reserved.
$COPYRIGHT$

Additional copyrights may follow

$HEADER$

Overview
========

This file is here for those who are building/exploring OMPI in its
source code form, most likely through a developer's tree (i.e., a
Subversion checkout).


Debugging vs. Optimized Builds
==============================

If you are building Open MPI from a Subversion checkout, the default
build includes a lot of debugging features.  This happens
automatically when when configure detects the hidden ".svn" Subversion
meta directory (that is present in all Subversion checkouts) in your
source tree, and therefore activates a number of developer-only
debugging features in the Open MPI code base.  The same is true if you
have a Mercurial checkout (with the hidden .hg meta directory).

By definition, debugging builds will perform [much] slower than
optimized builds of Open MPI.  You should *NOT* conduct timing tests
or try to run production performance numbers with debugging builds.

If you wish to build an optimized version of Open MPI from a
developer's checkout, you have three main options:

1. Use the "--with-platform=optimized" switch to configure.  This is
   the preferred (and probably easiest) method.  For example:

     shell$ svn co http://svn.open-mpi.org/svn/ompi/trunk ompi
     shell$ cd ompi
     shell$ ./autogen.sh
     shell$ mkdir build
     shell$ cd build
     shell$ ./configure --with-platform=optimized ...
     [...lots of output...]
     shell$ make all install

2. Use a VPATH build.  Simply build Open MPI from a different
   directory than the source tree -- one where the .svn / .hg
   subdirectory is not present.  For example:

     shell$ svn co http://svn.open-mpi.org/svn/ompi/trunk ompi
     shell$ cd ompi
     shell$ ./autogen.sh
     shell$ mkdir build
     shell$ cd build
     shell$ ../configure ...
     [...lots of output...]
     shell$ make all install

3. Manually specify configure options to disable all the debugging
   options (note that this is exactly what "--with-platform=optimized"
   does behind the scenes).  You'll need to carefully examine the
   output of "./configure --help" to see which options to disable.
   They are all listed, but some are less obvious than others (they
   are not listed here because it is a changing set of flags; by
   Murphy's Law, listing them here will pretty much guarantee that
   this file will get out of date):

     shell$ ./configure --disable-debug ...
     [...lots of output...]
     shell$ make all install


Use of GNU m4, Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool
==============================================

This procedure is *ONLY* necessary if you are building from a
developer's tree.  If you have an Open MPI distribution tarball, this
procedure is unnecessary -- you can (and should) skip reading this
section.

If you are building Open MPI from a developer's tree, you must first
install fairly recent versions of the GNU tools m4, Autoconf, Automake,
and Libtool.  The specific versions required depend on if you are
using the trunk or a release branch (and which release branch you are
using).  The specific versions can be found at:

  http://www.open-mpi.org/svn/building.php

You can check what versions of the autotools you have installed with
the following:

shell$ m4 --version
shell$ autoconf --version
shell$ automake --version
shell$ libtoolize --version

To strengthen the above point: the core Open MPI developers typically
use very, very recent versions of the GNU tools.  Little checking is
done to ensure that the code base is compatible with older versions of
these tools.  If you have a problem, try upgrading your GNU tools to
the latest versions and try again.

If you need newer versions, you are *strongly* encouraged to heed the
following advice:

NOTE: On MacOS/X, the default "libtool" program is different than the
      GNU libtool.  You must download and install the GNU version (via
      Fink or any other mechanism).

1. Unless your OS distribution has easy-to-use binary installations,
   the sources can be can be downloaded from:

        ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/m4/
        ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/
        ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/
        ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/libtool/

2. Build and install the tools in the following order:

   2a. m4
   2b. Autoconf
   2c. Automake
   2d. Libtool

3. You MUST install all four tools into the same prefix directory.
   These four tools are somewhat inter-related, and if they're going
   to be used together, they MUST share a common installation prefix.

   3a. It is *strongly* encouraged that you do not install your new
       versions over the OS-installed versions.  This could cause
       other things on your system to break.  Instead, install into
       $HOME/local, or /usr/local, or wherever else you tend to
       install "local" kinds of software.
   3b. In doing so, be sure to prefix your $path with the directory
       where they are installed.  For example, if you install into
       $HOME/local, you may want to edit your shell startup file
       (.bashrc, .cshrc, .tcshrc, etc.) to have something like:

          # For bash/sh:
          export PATH=$HOME/local/bin:$PATH
          # For csh/tcsh:
          set path = ($HOME/local/bin $path)

   3c. Ensure to set your $path *BEFORE* you configure/build/install
       the four packages.

4. All four packages require two simple commands to build and
   install (where PREFIX is the prefix discussed in 3, above).

      shell$ cd m4-1.4.11
      shell$ ./configure --prefix=PREFIX
      shell$ make; make install

      --> NOTE: The builds are so short that parallel builds really
          aren't worth it (and cause problems in some cases).

      --> If you are using the csh or tcsh shells, be sure to run the
          "rehash" command after you install each package.

      shell$ cd ../autoconf-2.63
      shell$ ./configure --prefix=PREFIX
      shell$ make; make install

      --> If you are using the csh or tcsh shells, be sure to run the
          "rehash" command after you install each package.

      shell$ cd ../automake-1.10.1
      shell$ ./configure --prefix=PREFIX
      shell$ make; make install

      --> If you are using the csh or tcsh shells, be sure to run the
          "rehash" command after you install each package.

      shell$ cd ../libtool-2.2.6
      shell$ ./configure --prefix=PREFIX
      shell$ make; make install

      --> If you are using the csh or tcsh shells, be sure to run the
          "rehash" command after you install each package.

   m4, Autoconf and Automake build and install very quickly; Libtool will
   take a minute or two.

5. You can now run OMPI's top-level "autogen.sh" script.  This script
   will invoke the GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool commands in the
   proper order and setup to run OMPI's top-level "configure" script.

   Running autogen.sh may take several minutes.  It's not very
   exciting to watch.  :-)

   5a. You generally need to run autogen.sh whenever the top-level
       file "configure.ac" changes, or any files in the config/
       directory change (the config/ directory is where a lot of
       "include" files for OMPI's configure script live).

   5b. You do *NOT* need to re-run autogen.sh if you modify a
       Makefile.am.

   5c. Note that "autogen.sh" automatically traverses the entire OMPI
       tree, running the GNU tools in all MCA component directories.
       This is not always necessary.  As you become more familiar with
       the OMPI sources, you will come to understand the when you only
       need to re-generate the top-level configure script, and when
       you need to re-generate *all* configure scripts (it's
       complicated -- not described here -- when in doubt, do them
       all).

       If you only need to re-generate the top-level configure script,
       you can run:

          shell$ autogen.sh -l

       (i.e., "local" mode) which will prevent autogen.sh from
       traversing all the MCA component directories.

   5d. Similarly, if you only need to regenerate the configure script
       in a single MCA component directory (and that component has a
       "configure.stub" file), cd into that component's directory and
       run autogen.sh in there directly:

          shell$ cd src/mca/pml/teg
          shell$ ../../../../autogen.sh

       This does *not* work if the component has a "configure.m4"
       file.  If a component's configure.m4 file changes, you will
       need to run "autogen.sh" from the top-level directory.

Use of Flex
===========

Flex is used during the compilation of a developer's checkout (it is
not used in distribution tarballs).  Other flavors of lex are *not*
supported: given the choice of making parsing code portable between
all flavors of lex and doing more interesting work on Open MPI, we
greatly prefer the latter.  

Several developers use the stable flex version v2.5.4a from July of
1997.  Others have upgraded to more recent versions; these also seem
to work fine.  Note that no testing has been performed to see what the
minimum version of Flex is required by Open MPI.  We suggest that you
use v2.5.4a at the earliest.

Note that the flex-generated code generates some compiler warnings on
some platforms, but the warnings do not seem to be consistent or
uniform on all platforms, compilers, and flex versions.  As such, we
have done little to try to remove those warnings.

If you do not have Flex installed, it can be downloaded from the
following URL:

   http://flex.sourceforge.net/