feature detection of paralllel HDF5 unreliable?

[Matthias Klose]

/usr/include/H5pubconf.h on maverick has H5_HAVE_PARALLEL defined, while the version in debian unstable leaves it undefined (using the same package source except for an armv7 related fix).

This leds to a build failure of plplot:

[ 16%] Generating plplot_octave.oct
cd /scratch/packages/tmp/plplot-5.9.5/debian/build_tmp/bindings/octave && /usr/bin/mkoctfile /scratch/packages/tmp/plplot-5.9.5/debian/build_tmp/bindings/octave/plplot_octave.cc -I/scratch/packages/tmp/plplot-5.9.5/debian/build_tmp/bindings/octave -I/scratch/packages/tmp/plplot-5.9.5/bindings/octave -I/scratch/packages/tmp/plplot-5.9.5/include --strip -L/scratch/packages/tmp/plplot-5.9.5/debian/build_tmp/src -lplplotd
In file included from /usr/include/hdf5.h:24,
                 from /usr/include/octave-3.2.4/octave/oct-hdf5.h:32,
                 from /usr/include/octave-3.2.4/octave/ov.h:43,
                 from /usr/include/octave-3.2.4/octave/oct-obj.h:35,
                 from /usr/include/octave-3.2.4/octave/ov-fcn.h:33,
                 from /usr/include/octave-3.2.4/octave/ov-builtin.h:29,
                 from /usr/include/octave-3.2.4/octave/defun-int.h:29,
                 from /usr/include/octave-3.2.4/octave/defun-dld.h:31,
                 from /usr/include/octave-3.2.4/octave/oct.h:36,
                 from /scratch/packages/tmp/plplot-5.9.5/debian/build_tmp/bindings/octave/plplot_octave.cc:11:
/usr/include/H5public.h:57: fatal error: mpi.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
make[3]: *** [bindings/octave/plplot_octave.oct] Error 1

Looking at both unstable and maverick build logs, you'll see that hdf5 is built more than once with different outcome on how this feature is configured.

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

plplot b-d's on octave3.2-headers, which depend on

libhdf5-serial-dev (>= 1.8.4) | libhdf5-lam-dev (>= 1.8.4) | libhdf5-mpich-dev (>= 1.8.4) | libhdf5-openmpi-dev (>= 1.8.4)

but plplot is only buildable with the -serial variant:

$ fgrep PARALLEL ./debian/libhdf5-serial-dev/usr/include/H5pubconf.h ./debian/libhdf5-openmpi-dev/usr/include/H5pubconf.h ./debian/libhdf5-lam-dev/usr/include/H5pubconf.h ./debian/libhdf5-mpich-dev/usr/include/H5pubconf.h
./debian/libhdf5-serial-dev/usr/include/H5pubconf.h:/* #undef H5_HAVE_PARALLEL */
./debian/libhdf5-openmpi-dev/usr/include/H5pubconf.h:#define H5_HAVE_PARALLEL 1
./debian/libhdf5-lam-dev/usr/include/H5pubconf.h:#define H5_HAVE_PARALLEL 1
./debian/libhdf5-mpich-dev/usr/include/H5pubconf.h:#define H5_HAVE_PARALLEL 1

[Andrew Ross (andrewross)]

The plplot build makes absolutely no use of hdf so whether the serial or parallel version is installed should be irrelevant. All plplot does is include oct.h. If the build of plplot fails in this manner then it sounds like an octave header bug and not a plplot bug to me.