WHAT: Drop mpirun single-dash CLI options such as -bynode (but keep the
double-dash equivalents, like --bynode)
WHY: It's a well-established de facto CLI option standard:
"-" is used for single-letter options
"--" is used for tokenized options
WHERE: probably mostly in orte/tools/orterun
WHEN: 1.9
TIMEOUT: Teleconf, Tuesday 21 Jan 2014
MORE DETAIL:
We've supported single- and double-dash variants of many mpirun options for
several years (e.g., --bynode and -bynode). With the exception of "-np",
there's really no reason we should support the single-dash versions ("-np" is
pretty universally expected in the MPI/HPC world; I don't think we'll ever be
able to get rid of it).
Let's deprecate all single-dash options (except -np) in 1.7.5/1.8 and eliminate
them in 1.9. Specifically, let's do something like this in 1.7.5:
-----
$ shell mpirun -bynode -np 4 a.out
------------------------------------------------------------------------
You used the "-bynode" option to mpirun, which, although it still functions
as you would expect it to, is now deprecated. The exactly-equivalent "--bynode"
option replaces the "-bynode" option.
*** NOTE THAT -bynode OPTION WILL DISAPPEAR IN A FUTURE VERSION OF OPEN MPI!
***
To be compatible with future versions of Open MPI, use the "--bynode" option.
If you can't easily change your mpirun command line, then you can set the MCA
parameter orterun_i_promise_to_update_my_cli_options_before_ompi_1_9 to 1,
which will suppress this message.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
This gives the user two clear options:
1. Update from -foo to --foo to be forward compatible
2. Set an MCA parameter to suppress the message, but risk not being forward
compatible
Then, on trunk/v1.9, we remove all the single-dash options.
Comments?
--
Jeff Squyres
jsquy...@cisco.com
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