Frequently Asked Questions Regarding Building JEDI Software

Why do I get segmentation faults when I try to run tests?

This can be caused by a stack-overflow if the stack size has been limited. On Linux systems, ensure the stack size and virtual memory limits are set to unlimited:

$ ulimit -s unlimited
$ ulimit -v unlimited

On MacOS(OSX) systems the Mach-based kernel typically enforces a hard upper limit which can be queried by ulimit -Hs. To set the stack size to this maximum allowable limit use:

$ ulimit -s $(ulimit -Hs)

How can I disable the building of a package in an ECBuild bundle?

Set the CMake variable BUNDLE_SKIP_<PKGNAME>=1, where PKGNAME is the all upper-case version of the package named in the ecbuild_bundle(PROJECT pkgname ...) command. For example to disable building fckit:

$ ecbuild -DBUNDLE_SKIP_FCKIT=1 <other-args>

How can I force CMake to disable finding an optional package?

The CMake find_package(PkgName) command can be disabled by setting the CMake variable CMAKE_DISABLE_FIND_PACKAGE_PkgName=1 where PkgName matches the case used in find_package(). For example, oops/CMakeLists.txt calls find_package(OpenMP). This represents an optional package dependency for oops because there is no REQUIRED argument. If desired, the entire search for OpenMP can be disabled, causing oops to be built without OpenMP support enabled.

$ cmake -DCMAKE_DISABLE_FIND_PACKAGE_OpenMP=1 <other-args>

How can I force CMake to find a package at a specific prefix?

Set either an environment variable or a CMake variable with the value PkgName_ROOT=<pkg-install-prefix>, where PkgName matches the case exactly as used in the find_package(PkgName) command. For example, to force the find_package(eckit) command to look in /opt/eckit, you would set an environment variable:

$ export eckit_ROOT=/opt/eckit
$ ecbuild <normal-args>

or use a CMake variable:

$ ecbuild -Deckit_ROOT=/opt/eckit <normal-args>

CMake says it wasn’t able to compile a test program with my compilers. What is wrong?

At the very beginning of the CMake configuration step when the

project( foo LANGUAGES C CXX Fortran )

line of code at the top of the CMakeLists.txt is processed, CMake will attempt to find the compilers based on the LANGUAGES specified. To set the compilers, CMake will first use the FC, CC, and CXX environment variables. Set these to known working compiler names for your system. If CMake says it can’t compile a simple test program, there is likely something wrong with the compiler paths or environment variables. This is a good time to use the cmake --debug-trycompile flag. This will cause CMake to more verbosely print out what it is trying to compile, and it will save the attempted test-builds under <bindir>/CMakeFiles/CMakeTmp. See: try_compile

My build failed on the CMake configure phase. How can I debug?

Within the CMake build directory, CMake will store a variable cache called CMakeCache.txt. This file can be searched for problem package names. All packages found with find_package() will set variables in the cache and if these variables have incorrect locations, you have found the problem. Also, the cmake -LA command can print out all the CMAKE cache variables (it must be run from the build directory).

CMake has several useful flags to aid debugging:

  • --log-level=debug - print more logging info. This also helps with ecbuild internal errors.

  • --debug-find - use this if you can’t find a package.

  • --debug-trycompile - save the directories of test-compilations performed by cmake.

  • --trace - log/print all actions; very verbose.

My build failed during the compilation phase. How should I debug?

First, build with -j1 to ensure that the build will fail on the first error. Also, set the VERBOSE=1 environment variable to cause the make to print out each command it executes.

$ VERBOSE=1 make -j1

If the problem cannot be solved and a github issue must be created, the entire failing compiler line and error messages should be posted verbatim.

I don’t have internet access on my build machine. Can I still build a JEDI bundle?

Yes. Normally this happens on a machine where the login nodes have internet access, but the compute nodes do not. First, on a node with outside internet access, make sure the bundle and all sub-packages are cloned and have the latest changes fetched from upstream. A successful run of ecbuild on the bundle will get to this state. From this point on, it will be possible to build by calling make without requiring internet access. However, if the branch names in the bundle’s CMakeLists.txt are modified and do not match what branch is currently checked out for that package, the next call to make will call git fetch and attempt to checkout the specified branch. To prevent this fetch command, either:

  1. Manually git checkout the correct branch for the package. This can be done without internet access.

  2. Or, replace the UPDATE keyword with NOREMOTE in the ecbuild_bundle() command.

If at some point you need to fetch changes from a remote repository, this can be done with make update in a separate terminal window connected to the login-node. Once the fetch and checkout are complete, the build can proceed on the compute node without internet access.