[Pkg-scicomp-devel] Bug#571460: xmds: Please drop build-dependency on LAM/MPI and/or MPICH

[manuel at debian.org]

Source: xmds
Version: 1.6.6-2
Severity: important
User: debian-science at lists.debian.org
Usertags: old-mpi-eol

Dear maintainer,

xmds build-depends on LAM/MPI and/or MPICH which are not developed upstream
anymore.

There were several discussions on the Debian Science mailing list to EOL both
LAM/MPI and MPICH, the latest discussion happening at [1]. Please help us with
this goal by dropping the build-dependency on lam-dev and/or libmpich1.0-dev.

You currently have two possibilities to build MPI-enabled packages:

 1. You can build-depend on mpi-default-dev to build a single MPI-enabled
    package that uses Debian's default MPI implementation. The resulting
    package should use the "-mpi" suffix. This allows easy transistions to
    other MPI implementations in case it's needed. This solution is easy to
    maintain but does not allow your users to choose a different implementation
    than the default.
 2. You can build packages against all currently supported MPI implementations
    in Debian, which are Open MPI (openmpi) and MPICH2 (mpich2). You have to
    change your build scripts to build against both implementations. There is
    no automatic way to do this at the moment. The resulting packages should
    use the "-openmpi" and "-mpich2" suffixes. This solution is harder to
    maintain but supports all MPI implementation, so your users can choose.

You're free to choose which of the solutions you'd like to implement. If there
are any questions, feel free to write to the Debian Science Maintainers mailing
list [2].

Best regards,
Manuel

-- 
 [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-science/2009/11/msg00010.html
 [2] debian-science-maintainers at lists.alioth.debian.org