mpiexec-0.82's possible bug ?

[Pete Wyckoff]

chan at mcs.anl.gov wrote on Mon, 05 Mar 2007 13:21 -0600:
> While I am reading the mpiexec source code to understand how mpiexec makes
> use of mpich2's pmi interface, I notice there may be a bug.
> 
> mpiexec.c's main() calls distribute_executable() which then calls
> start_tasks() {without any argument}.  But start_tasks is defined:
> 
> int start_tasks(int spawn)
> 
> A grep of "start_tasks" in the source code shows:
> 
> > grep -n start_tasks *.c
> exedist.c:151:    start_tasks();

Indeed, thanks for noticing.  The bits in there have truly rotted.
It is to support a method for distributing the executable in advance
of running the parallel program.  Most sites use a shared file
system like NFS instead.  I'm sure if anyone were to try enabling
--with-fast-dist during configure they would not even get a
successful compilation.

If this is something you are interested in and want to resurrect,
I'll certainly help you if you run into issues in the code.

		-- Pete