Could any of you tell me exactly the intention of "--with-dynamic-loading" in the context of PETSc?
I tend to think that dynamic loading of user-defined stuff should always be supported if dlopen() or equivalent calls are available. For example, I'm able to build Python from sources with static libraries, but I can still use Python .so extension modules loaded via dlopen(). So usage of dynamic loading is somewhat orthogonal to static/shared libraries. If PETSc-builtin Vec/Mat/KSP/etc subtypes implementations could be built on separate .so files intended to be loaded at runtime, then --with-dynamic-loading would ask for such kind of build. And then a normal build would be just like now (let say, single petsc.so library with everything bundled). However, regardless of the way PETSc would be built, users should still be able to dlopen() modules and register custom subtypes at runtime, even if PETSc was built with static libraries!! -- Lisandro Dalcin --------------- CIMEC (INTEC/CONICET-UNL) Predio CONICET-Santa Fe Colectora RN 168 Km 472, Paraje El Pozo Tel: +54-342-4511594 (ext 1011) Tel/Fax: +54-342-4511169
