The PALM build script

The script to compile PALM and its [utility (pre-/postprocessing) programs] is called palmbuild. It resides under trunk/SCRIPTS and is invoked by the automatic installer as part of the installation process. It can also be executed manually, e.g. in case of a PALM code update from the svn repository, or code modifications by the user. Each modification of the source code requires new compilation.

palmbuild

• is steered by settings, e.g. about compiler options, in the configuration file .palm.config.<configuration identifier>,
  
  
• compiles code based on the unix makefile mechanism,
  
  
• adds the created binaries to the directory MAKE_DEPOSITORY_<configuration identifier>,
  
  
• is automatically invoked by the PALM run script palmrun in case this doesn't find the respective MAKE_DEPOSITORY_<configuration identifier>.

Execute palmbuild

Assuming a configuration file named .palm.config.default, you need to type the command

   palmbuild -c default

Since you can have different configuration files (for different compilers, compiler options, or hosts), you need to specify the configuration file to-be-used by the option -c. The suffix default in this example is the <configuration identifier>, which can be an arbitrary ASCII-character string.

After entering the command, informative messages will appear in the terminal:

#------------------------------------------------------------------------# 
| palmbuild  1.0  Rev: 3210 $              Thu Aug 30 09:29:56 CEST 2018 | 
| PALM code       Rev: 3220                                              | 
|                                                                        | 
| called on:   bora (IP:130.75.105.103)                                  | 
| config file: /home/raasch/palm/current_version/.palm.config.abcde      | 
| makefile:    /home/raasch/palm/current_version/trunk/SOURCE/Makefile   | 
| source path: /home/raasch/palm/current_version/trunk/SOURCE            | 
|                                                                        | 
| config. identifier: abcde                                              | 
| local depository:   /home/raasch/palm/current_version/MAKE_DEPOSITORY_ | 
|                     abcde                                              | 
| username:           raasch                                             | 
| address:            130.75.105.103                                     | 
| compiler:           mpif90                                             | 
| serial compiler:    ifort                                              | 
| make options:       -j 8                                               | 
| cpp options:        -cpp -D__parallel ......                           | 
| compiler options:   -fpe0 -O3 ......                                   | 
| linker options:     -fpe0 -O3 ......                                   | 
#------------------------------------------------------------------------# 

 >>> continue (y(es)/a(bort)) ?  

After confirmation (y(es)), compilation starts and compiler messages will appear. After successful completion, the binaries reside in the directory MAKE_DEPOSITORY_default under the path given by the variable [%base_directory] in the configuration file. When invoking palmbuild locally for compilation of PALM on a [link-to remote computer], sources are copied via scp to the remote host, and the compiler is called via ssh on the remote host as well. Here, the MAKE_DEPOSITORY_default also lands [%base_directory].

In case you have updated the PALM code, you need to call palmbuild again:

   cd ~/palm/current_version
   svn update trunk
   palmbuild -c default

If you have changed the compiler options in the configuration file and like to re-compile the PALM code with the new options, you need to touch the source code files in your working copy of the repository first,

   touch trunk/SOURCE/*.f90
   palmbuild -c default

because otherwise the make mechanism would see no changes in the source code and would not compile at all (message make: Nothing to be done). Alternatively, you may delete the MAKE_DEPOSITORY folder:

   rm -rf MAKE_DEPOSITORY_default
   palmbuild -c default

However, best practice would be to create [link-to individual .palm.config files] for the different configurations, because this prevents from having to re-compile over and over again whenever modifying and working with just one single .palm.config file. Of course, palmbuild has to be executed for each configuration.

Automatic calls of palmbuild from palmrun

palmbuild is automatically called by palmrun, but only if palmrun has been manually called (i.e. if the palmrun call has been entered by the user in a terminal). There are two different calls for two different purposes:

1. If palmrun does not find a MAKE_DEPOSITORY folder, it calls palmbuild with the respective configuration identifier (e.g. palmbuild -c abcde in order to pre-compile PALM.

2. palmbuild is called to compile sources for the specific PALM run. This may be user-interface code (if there is any), or modified code from the working copy (i.e. from .../trunk/SOURCE) that has been specified by palmrun option -s. palmrun has put the respective source files (plus all other files from the MAKE_DEPOSITORY) into a newly created folder named SOURCES_FOR_RUN_<ci>_<ri>, where <ci> is the configuration identifier and <ri> is the run identifier that have been specified with palmrun options -c and -r. This SOURCES_FOR_RUN-folder is created in the directory that has been specified by variable base_directory in the configuration file. palmbuild copies this folder to directory $fast_io_catalog/SOURCES_FOR_RUN_<ci>_<ri> and compiles the user-interface or/and modified sources (if there are any). Variable fast_io_catalog is also defined in the configuration file. In case of remote jobs, the SOURCES_FOR_RUN folder is copied via scp and the compiler is invoked via ssh. The internal palmbuild call generally looks like

      palmbuild -v -c <ci> -r <ri>
   

   where <ci and ri are as given by the respective palmrun options. Option -V is added if the corresponding palmrun option -V has been set. For explanations of the internal options see the table below.

palmbuild is never called by palmrun calls from within a batch job, or by automatic calls of palmrun to generate restart jobs. Reasons are to avoid compilation within batch jobs (which may be very inefficient if the job runs on many cores), and because automatic restart runs should and can re-use the binaries that have been created by the initial run.

palmbuild options

Only option -c and -v should be used for manual calls of palmbuild. Other options are internal options that only work if palmbuild is automatically called from within palmrun. --- in the default value column means that the respective option has no argument.

option	default value	meaning
-c	default	configuration identifier. Tells palmbuild which configuration file is to be used.
-r	" "	run identifier, as specified with palmrun option -r
-v	---	to run in silent mode. Switches off most messages and queries
-V	---	do not compile sources for the SOURCES_FOR_RUN folder

How does palmbuild operate?

A detailed list of consecutive steps that are carried out will follow soon ...