Bug#575259: mpi-default-dev doesn't ensure that the right implementation is used

[Lucas Nussbaum]

On 24/03/10 at 16:20 +0100, Thibaut Paumard wrote:
> Package: mpi-default-dev
> Version: 0.6
> Severity: normal
> Tags: patch
> 
> As discussed on [1]debian-science, the way mpi-default-dev works
> does not ensure
> that the right MPI implementation is used.  For instance, if
> libmpich2-dev is
> installed on the system, it will _always_ be used by default because
> it has the
> same priority as OpenMPI and sorts before OpenMPI in lexicological
> order.
> 
> Several solutions were [2]discussed. The easiest and most robust is
> to conflict
> with all the non-default implementations of mpi-dev.  A smoother
> solution is to
> provide links like "mpicc.default" pointing to the right
> implementation, and
> install them as alternatives for mpicc et al. with a high priority.
> This should
> always work on buildds but leaves a possibility to build with the wrong
> implementation on a box where the admin has set the alternative
> manually.
> 
> I provide a patch implementing the first of these two solutions.

Actually, the information I was missing is that some packages depend on
mpi-default-dev. I thought that mpi-default-dev was only used as a
build-dependency. In that case, conflicting is indeed harmful, so the
only solution is the alternatives hack...
-- 
| Lucas Nussbaum
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