Hello All,
How feasible would it be to accept user input during the configure process when
installing a new package using —download-package when the dependency is
missing? For example say you are configuring with the following options:
./configure —download-pragmatic
Which depends on Metis, so halfway through configure you will receive the
following error:
*******************************************************************************
UNABLE to CONFIGURE with GIVEN OPTIONS (see configure.log for
details):
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Did not find package METIS needed by pragmatic.
Enable the package using --with-metis or --download-metis
*******************************************************************************
Why can’t there instead be a prompt that states “[Package] depends on
[Dependency], would you like to also download [Dependency] (y , n)?” whenever
PETSc detects that you are missing a dependency. Configure would then restart
from the appropriate section (wherever that may be) in the configuration
process instead of all the way from the beginning. Use case for this would be
for configuring on systems such as Theta where the configure process takes
roughly 13.772 billion years to complete. Having to restart from the beginning
every time is tedious.
As I am largely unfamiliar with the internals of the configure process, this is
potentially more of an involved change than I am imagining, given that many
libraries likely have many small dependencies and hooks which have to be set
throughout the configuration process, and so its possible not everything could
be skipped.
Best,
Jacob
