[OMPI devel] inconsistency of behaviour and description of "openmpi-4.1.0$ ./configure --with-pmix=external ... "

[Paul Kapinos via devel]

Dear Open MPI developer,

The help for ./configure in openmpi-4.1.0 says (see also below):
  > external" forces Open MPI to use an external installation of PMIx.




  > checking if user requested internal PMIx support(external)... no
  > ...
  > PMIx support: Internal



Have a nice day,
Paul Kapinos

P.S. grep for 'PMIx' in config-log
https://rwth-aachen.sciebo.de/s/xtNIx2dJlTy2Ams
(pastebin and gist both need accounts and I hate accounts).


./configure --help
   .............
    --with-pmix(=DIR)       Build PMIx support. DIR can take one of three
                            values: "internal", "external", or a valid directory
                            name. "internal" (or no DIR value) forces Open MPI

                            Open MPI to use an external installation of PMIx.

                            adds DIR/include, DIR/lib, and DIR/lib64 to the
                            search path for headers and libraries. Note that
                            Open MPI does not support --without-pmix.

--
Dipl.-Inform. Paul Kapinos   -   High Performance Computing,
RWTH Aachen University, IT Center
Seffenter Weg 23,  D 52074  Aachen (Germany)
Tel: +49 241/80-24915

If I understood correctly, this (also) means that if there is *no* external PMIx available on the system, the ./configure run should fail and exit with non-zero exit code. However, when trying this on a node with no PMIx library installed, we just found out that the configure finishes with no error message, and configure also internal PMIx, This is surprising and feels like an error. Could you have a look at this? Thank you! to use its internal copy of PMIx. "external" forces Supplying a valid directory name also forces Open MPI to use an external installation of PMIx, and

smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature