Shared vs static linkage of METIS and ParMETIS

[ivan-pi]

Is there a reason why you prefer static linkage of the METIS and ParMETIS libraries?

HemoCell/cmake/find_parmetis.cmake

Line 26 in ccccc63

find_library(PARMETIS_LIBRARY libparmetis.a

HemoCell/cmake/find_parmetis.cmake

Line 42 in ccccc63

find_library(METIS_LIBRARY libmetis.a

Changing these lines to contain parmetis and metis would allow shared libraries to be used too, as shown in the Kitware FindPARMETIS file.

Background of my query, on the LRZ clusters a shared ParMETIS library is available by default, but not a static one:

~/HemoCell/build$ cmake .. -DMETIS_INCLUDE_DIR=${METIS_INCDIR} -DMETIS_LIBRARY_DIR=${METIS_LIBDIR} -DPARMETIS_INCLUDE_DIR=${PARMETIS_INCDIR} -DPARMETIS_LIBRARY_DIR=${PARMETIS_LIBDIR}

...

-- parmetis: /path/to/parmetis/4.0.3-intel-xmji2aa/include
-- parmetis: /path/to/parmetis/4.0.3-intel-xmji2aa/lib/libparmetis.so
-- metis: /path/to/metis/5.1.0-intel-q7bpovj/include
-- metis: /path/to/metis/5.1.0-intel-q7bpovj/lib/libmetis.so

...

CMake's default order on Linux is to search for shared and then static libraries. It is possible to change this by modifying the CMAKE_FIND_LIBRARY_SUFFIXES variable which could be controlled by a new variable such as METIS_USE_STATIC_LIBS.

I am aware you have a setup script for ParMETIS (https://github.com/UvaCsl/HemoCell/blob/master/external/setup.sh), but it might not be possible to use on systems without outgoing internet access (such as SuperMUC).