[Fedora-packaging] Ban autoloading of MPI environment

[Jussi Lehtola]

Hi,


the MPI guidelines currently state

"If the packager wishes to provide alternatives support, it MUST be
placed in a subpackage ..."

However, it has become clear that this statement is not clear enough
and warrants an additional specification. The guidelines were written
as to be fair to all people independent of the compiler and runtime
they are using.

However, some MPI runtimes have been misbehaving by autoloading their
environment with a file in /etc/profile.d placed in the runtime
package (BZ #647147). This has disunited the user interface and caused
many problems for package builders trying to compile a serial version
of an MPI-aware code (see for instance BZ #737043).

I am thus proposing that the MPI guidelines be clarified by the
additional statement

"MUST: If the maintainer wants to provide autoloading support for the
MPI environment, it must be placed in a separately installable
subpackage."

(see text in bold italics at
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/MPI )
-- 
Jussi Lehtola
Fedora Project Contributor
jussilehtola at fedoraproject.org