Bug#833144: mpich: MPICH compiled with BCLR causes problems with valgrind

[Julian Andrej]

Package: mpich
Version: 3.2-6build1
Severity: grave
Tags: upstream
Justification: renders package unusable

Dear Maintainer,

using the mpich package causes problems when used with valgrind, which is
described well in [1]. The problem is caused by the compile option

# BLCR checkpointing support
ifneq (,$(findstring $(DEB_HOST_ARCH),amd64 armel i386 powerpc))
extra_flags += --enable-checkpointing --with-hydra-ckpointlib=blcr
endif

which is also reported in [2]. If you look at the MPICH wiki [3], there is a
conversation, that led to dropping BCLR from MPICH altogether.

The valgrind problems makes the package unusable for developers who try to
check for memory errors via valgrind.

Regards,
Julian Andrej

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mpich2/+bug/1045326
[2] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10602966/free-crashes-but-only-if-more-
than-a-certain-size-of-memory-is-allocated/37643501#37643501
[3] https://wiki.mpich.org/mpich/index.php/Checkpointing



-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers xenial-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'xenial-updates'), (500, 'xenial-security'), (500, 'xenial')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.4.0-31-generic (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)