[mpich-discuss] Possible bug: --enable-g=all configure option does not include all other --enable-g options

[Jeremiah Willcock]

On Mon, 11 Mar 2013, Dave Goodell wrote:

> On Mar 11, 2013, at 3:36 PM CDT, Jeremiah Willcock <jewillco at osl.iu.edu> wrote:
>
>> In MPICH 3.0.2, the help message for the --enable-g=all configure 
>> option states that it enables "All of the above choices", but in fact 
>> (according to configure.ac) it does not enable the "handle" or 
>> "memarena" debugging flags.  Is that the intended behavior?  Thank you 
>> for your help.
>
> The situation is unclear.  I just did a little bit of git archaeology 
> and it looks like these flags were added prior to MPICH2-1.0.6, which is 
> as far back as I can look without having to sift through ancient CVS 
> history.  The pickaxe doesn't show any place where variables 
> corresponding to those flags might have been removed from the "all|yes)" 
> case.  It looks like just a mistake or sloppiness on someone's part in 
> the distant past.
>
> I'm not sure what the right "fix" is.  The "memarena" option actually 
> introduces quite a bit of overhead that we may not want enabled 
> casually.  The "handles" option is pretty lightweight, at least in stock 
> MPICH.  I suppose we could add both to the "all" option and then change 
> the "yes" option to be a set of reasonable defaults instead.
>
> Do you have a preference?  Or are you just observing a discrepancy?

I was both observing a discrepancy and trying to debug something and was 
surprised that "all" didn't include "handles".

-- Jeremiah Willcock