default compiler

[James F Amundson]

OK, I give up. How do I tell spack which compiler(+version) I want to get by default?

—Jim

------------------------
James Amundson
Head, Scientific Software Infrastructure Department
Scientific Computing Division, Fermilab
+1 (630) 840-2430

[Gamblin, Todd]

Two ways:

1. In the package file, you can tell Spack what version is preferred by adding preferred=True in the version directive.
2. In packages.yaml, you can specify for some or all packages how concretization should happen. Examples here:

http://software.llnl.gov/spack/configuration.html#concretization-preferences

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[Elizabeth F]

James,

I'm curious to know, what resources did you look at / think of looking at before you gave up?  Did you look at the Spack manual?  If not, why not?

This will help improve Spack documentation and user manual.

Thank you,

-- Elizabeth

[James F Amundson]

Thanks! (2) was what I was looking for. It’s obvious in retrospect… (See reply to Elizabeth.)

—Jim
------------------------
James Amundson
Head, Scientific Software Infrastructure Department
Scientific Computing Division, Fermilab
+1 (630) 840-2430

[James F Amundson]

Elizabeth,

You ask good questions. I was looking in the section on compiler configuration:

http://software.llnl.gov/spack/basic_usage.html#compiler-configuration

I’ll try to put together a patch to the docs to refer to concretization preferences in the compiler configuration section.

I was also hoping that some variation on 

spack compiler info —default

or

spack compiler default

or something like that would give me the information I was looking for. Maybe I can put together a patch for that, too.

There was one gotcha, which was also related to the documentation. In my packages.yaml, I had:

    cmake:

        paths:

            cm...@3.4.3%cl...@3.5.0: /usr/local/bin/cmake

        buildable: False

That was a bad idea. I really wanted:

    cmake:

        paths:

            cm...@3.4.3: /usr/local/bin/cmake

        buildable: False

The former version effectively set my default compiler to cl...@3.5.0 for all cmake-based projects! I find that behavior to be pretty subtle, even though I understand it. It might be a good idea if one of the external package examples did not specify a compiler. I even think using the (latter) cmake example would be a good one for the manual. I’m sure it’s what many people would want.

—Jim

 

------------------------
James Amundson
Head, Scientific Software Infrastructure Department
Scientific Computing Division, Fermilab
+1 (630) 840-2430