MPI and cross compilation

[Olaf Lenz]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hello!

I'm the maintainer of the scientific simulation package ESPResSo[1].

ESPResSo is a package that uses parallelization via MPI[2]. MPI usually
has to be supported by the compiler, i.e. it is not just a library. In
many cases, the compiled program is not executable on the build host, as
it has to be run via a queuing system or the like. Therefore, from the
autoconf point of view, the build process is a cross-compilation.

After updateing to autoconf 2.61, I now get the following warning from
configure when it tries to find "ranlib" during this cross-compilation:
- ---
WARNING: In the future, Autoconf will not detect cross-tools
whose name does not start with the host triplet.  If you think this
configuration is useful to you, please write to address@hidden
- ---

This new behaviour would be very annoying for ESPResSo, as in the most
cases, the standard tools (like ranlib) can be used to handle the MPI
executables. It would be pretty labourious if it would be necessary to
explicitly name all the tools on the configure command line.
Therefore, I would strongly vote to either keep the old behaviour, or at
least add a macro that allows to introduce the old behaviour!

Best regards, and keep up the good work,

        Olaf Lenz


References:
[1] http://espressowiki.mpip-mainz.mpg.de/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
[2] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_Passing_Interface
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFG8S0ptQ3riQ3oo/oRAhWkAKCTWFnEo3WYrLf/Fiyn4oEgVdj1ewCgiGIO
qKZzwbtPvvdNoNA5Hv8BLYw=
=zoqX
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----