This type of notification is a good idea, although I would suggest a few things.

- Find a way to make this message visible to people who script their installation and redirect their output to log files. For example, if I get executable binaries and I can't find the word error or warning in any log file then I don't read the thousands of lines and might miss a warning message like this.

- While mentioning that the installation should be tested, mention what can happen if it is not tested: e.g. "we have verified reports of installations that appear successful yielding incorrect dynamics because, for instance, the PME is not connecting to the dynamics..."

- I think that the test set should be included and should be automatically run, and the binaries deleted if the tests fail, even if that makes it a large distribution file and makes the installation take 12h. This is scientific software, and how many people include the compiler that they use and confirm that they used the test set when writing up their methods section? The strict inclusion of a test set would make gromacs fast, flexible, free, and fastidiously reproducible.

Chris.

-- original message --

We discussed including the test set with the distribution, which would
simplify the procedure, but decided against it, because the distribution
would become a lot bigger.

Maybe we should reconsider this?

I think the most common problem people have is not knowing where to get the test set (I know I've seen it asked several times across this list). Since it's got its own page on the wiki with all the documentation, maybe it would be useful to
simply print a message to the screen after the installation:

"If you would like to test your installation of Gromacs, visit
http://wiki.gromacs.org/index.php/Test-set and download the appropriate set.
This is especially recommended for users who have compiled with gcc 4.x"

Just a thought.

-Justin

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