Build system is not very portable

[matze]

I tried to build SHOC but I encountered some problems:

• You provide a configure script that requires Automake 1.13. This version is neither available in Ubuntu 12.04 nor in openSUSE 12.3. You should avoid putting configure (and also all generated Makefile.in files) under version control and actually provide a shell script (people usually call it autogen.sh) that runs everything necessary to create the configure script. I fixed that by running autoreconf myself and adding empty NEWS, README, AUTHORS and ChangeLog files.
• Also, I cannot set the build flags for OpenCL. For example, I have the CUDA SDK installed under /usr/local/cuda which is hard to find for the configure script. Some flags like OPENCL_CFLAGS and OPENCL_LIBS would help. But abusing CXXFLAGS (CFLAGS on the other hand not ...) helps though.
• I installed SHOC into prefix $HOME/usr but running shocdriver in $HOME/usr/bin tells me that it cannot find driver.pl. But the actual programs work just fine.

[psteinb]

I totally agree. I just discovered SHOC and think it's a phantastic project, but the build system is a bit inflexible.

[rothpc]

Peter,

I don’t know if this response ever made it to you:

We have a script called build-aux/bootstrap.sh in the build repository that can be used to regenerate the configure and automake-based makefiles. The user manual documents how to use it to regenerate configure and the Makefile.in files.

Phil Roth

On Feb 19, 2014, at 8:39 , Peter Steinbach notifications@github.com wrote:

I totally agree. I just discovered SHOC and think it's a phantastic project, but the build system is a bit inflexible.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

Philip C. Roth | +1 865 241-1543 | http://ft.ornl.gov/~rothpc

[psteinb]

Hi,

thank you, Phil, for the reply. I did actually read the manual, but stopped reading once I hit "configure;make;make install" in section 3.1 (Page 2). I reviewed the manual upon you message and eventually found secion 3.1.5 (Page 6) that describes how the configure script can be regenerated. However from reading your manual, it didn't occur to me why this is necessary at all. Maybe you wanna add a clarification that if people stumble upon problems with the default configure script, they have the option to generate a more custom version fitting to their operating system and chosen environment. This would make it more clear why ./build-aux/bootstrap.sh exists.

Peter