Re: [OMPI devel] Build failures of 1.2.3 on Debian hppa, mips, mipsel, s390, m68k

[Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd@debian.org>]

Hi Brian,

On 14 July 2007 at 10:47, Brian Barrett wrote:
| On Jul 14, 2007, at 8:26 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
| 
| > Please let us (ie Debian's openmpi maintainers) how else we can  
| > help.  I am
| > ccing the porters lists (for hppa, m68k, mips) too to invite them  
| > to help. I
| > hope that doesn't get the spam filters going...  I may contact the  
| > 'arm'
| > porters once we have a failure; s390 and sparc activity are not as  
| > big these
| > days.
| 
| Open MPI uses some assembly for things like atomic locks, atomic  
| compare and swap, memory barriers, and the like.  We currently have  
| support for:
| 
|    * x86 (32 bit)
|    * x86_64 / amd64 (32 or 64 bit)
|    * UltraSparc (v8plus and v9* targets)
|    * IA64
|    * PowerPC (32 or 64 bit)
| 
| We also have code for:
| 
|    * Alpha
|    * MIPS (32 bit NEW ABI & 64 bit)
| 
| This support isn't well tested in a while and it sounds like it  

We'd be glad to help. This has worked well for other project. I think that
Debian is the quasi-official testbed for xfree.org given all our platforms.

So we can definitely try to get Alpha, Mips, ... up to speed with suitable
regression tests.

| doesn't work for MIPS.  At one time, we supported the sparc v8  
| target, but that The other platforms (hppa, mipsel (how is this  
| different than MIPS?), s390, m68k) aren't at all supported by Open  
| MPI.  If you can get the real error messages, I can help on the MIPS  
| issue, although it'll have to be a low priority.

I think mipsel is the lower-endian variant. Something similar now exists for
arm where there's also armel.  

Mips support would be nice as there are some HPC platform based on these
chips.  Maybe someone from the debian-mips team can speak up and take a lead
here to work with with you.

| We don't currently have support for a non-assembly code path.  We  
| originally planned on having one, but the team went away from that  
| route over time and there's no way to build Open MPI without assembly  
| support right now.

Personally, I think that's a fair call given what Open MPI sets out to do.
Debian 'at large' aims for the 'everything ought to build everywhere' model
(which has its merits too) so I'll have to see if we get pushback if we
restric the platforms.  

So given the list of current failures, hppa and mips/mipsel are the most
likely candidates for improvement.  Sparc and s390 are fairly dead at Debian
so not sure if anything will change there.  m68k is close to officially dead
but a few vocal enthusiast try to keep it on life-support.

Cheers, Dirk

-- 
Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something. 
                                                  -- Thomas A. Edison