Speaking of configure and user experiences, I just noticed that PETSc defines top_builddir (in petscconf), which conflicts with automake-generated makefiles, making it impossible in some cases to include PETSc's petsconf file into Makefile.am (as far as I know that's the only thing that causes problems). I hate automake in general, but sometimes you are stuck with it and it's very nice to be able to include PETSc make snippets even in automake files and avoid a lot of pain.
Anyway, since this is in a file that gets copied to the install location, I think in general it would be best to avoid defining build tree-related variables (especially those that conflict with auto-generated ones from other tools). Thoughts? Boyana Satish Balay wrote: > On Thu, 17 Jul 2008, Satish Balay wrote: > > >>> If we could support the same way that this is done with autoconf packages >>> that would improve a users experience with PETSc. >>> >> I guess we don't prevent the usage from shell scripts. We just promote >> the alternative usage of adding configure options in a python script. >> > > And we generate $PETSC_ARCH/config/configure.py - which can be rerun > by the user. Alternative would be to generate this file in a > shell-script notation.. > > Satish > > -- Boyana Norris, Computer Scientist | Email: norris at mcs.anl.gov Argonne National Laboratory | Phone: +1 (630) 252 7908 http://www.mcs.anl.gov/~norris/ | Fax: +1 (630) 252 5986