Can the FORCE option in build_visit modules be removed?

visit-dav / visit

VisIt - Visualization and Data Analysis for Mesh-based Scientific Data

https://visit.llnl.gov

BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License

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Can the FORCE option in build_visit modules be removed? #19713

Open biagas opened 1 month ago

biagas commented 1 month ago

Is your feature request related to a problem?

A number of build_visit modules have a "FORCE" option. Not sure why its there, or when it is useful. Can it be removed?

Modules with FORCE: bv_adios.sh bv_cmake.sh bv_python.sh bv_qt.sh bv_qwt.sh bv_uintah.sh bv_vtk.sh

What I think is the relevant bvmain section that should be using `bvforcebut instead callsbv_enable` https://github.com/visit-dav/visit/blob/5caaa0297b9b5925ce9c34a8b76c2a0642526405/src/tools/dev/scripts/bv_support/bv_main.sh#L1146-L1150

None of the bv_<module>_enable functions read an argument, they all just set FORCE_<MODULE> to "yes".

Having the 'FORCE' option seems redundant.

markcmiller86 commented 1 month ago

I propose a slight change to issue title, Remove FORCE and intra-package build_xxx calls in build_visit and then adding this to issue...

We appear to have some places in build_visit where we explicitly call build_cmake from within another package’s bv_xxx.sh file. But, this design is not universal either. For example Adios and Conduit do it but not VTK, VTKm, icet or xdmf.

This should not be happening. We should handle CMake dependence by adding cmake to the depends_on variable for the package.