[Pkg-openmpi-maintainers] Question regarding apparent dependency on libibverbs

[Mikael Djurfeldt]

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 4:47 PM, Manuel Prinz <manuel at debian.org> wrote:
> This is right, we should find a solution to this. The things that come
> to my mind:
>
>  1. Disable InfiniBand support in Open MPI when building static libs
>  2. Fix the build-dependancy
>  3. Link against the shared libs when building music
>
> I think we should go for solutions 2 *and* 3. Obviously, the
> build-dependancy should be fixed. But we only provide the static libs
> for convenience of our users; they are not expected to be used by
> packages. Compiling using static libs puts extra burden on the shoulders
> of maintainers and the security team. If you can, please consider
> building against the shared libraries instead. I did not look into music
> so I do not know whether that is possible, but if you need assistance
> with that, please let me know. You'll also get into difficulties when
> the default Open MPI implementation is changed by the admin; since the
> new mpirun will probably not execute music correctly. If you go with
> linking statically, please consider mailing the security team so your
> package can be included to the list of packages duplicating code.
>
> Does this sound like a reasonable solution to you?

Well, I'm not quite sure what you refer to with "build-dependency".
The music package has a build-dependency on libopenmpi-dev.  In my
opinion, libopenmpi-dev should have a "dependency" (i.e. not
build-dependency) on libibverbs-dev.  If you would add such a
dependency, then installing libopenmpi-dev would automatically drag
libibverbs-dev with it and the missing libibverbs.la file would be
installed.

The reason why I think this is that your libmpi.la refers the
libibverbs.la and, thus, building against libopenmpi-dev cannot work
correctly if one uses libtool unless libibverbs-dev is also installed.

Regarding static and shared libraries, I don't think it matters much
to music which I use.  I certainly *can* use shared libraries.  But
note that music doesn't refer to libibverbs at all.  It is because
music uses libtool that libibverbs.la gets referred to.  I can't do
much about that by changes to music.

Sorry if I'm now repeating the obvious or repeating what you've
already said.  I just want to avoid misunderstanding.

Is it OK for you to add an ordinary dependency on libibverbs-dev?

Best regards,
Mikael D.