Minimal vs full toolchains

When it comes to specifying toolchains in the easyconfig files for a set of software packages, two approaches are possible. Both of them have advantanges and disadvantages, so it depends on personal taste or use case to pick either of these.

Minimal toolchains

Use a toolchain that provides the minimal requirements to build the software package.

e.g. CMake-2.8.4-GCC-4.7.2, CMake-2.8.4-icc-2013.5.192, ...

Advantages

• fewer modules to deal with
• provides flexibility for playing around with different MPI libraries
• ...

Disadvantages

• makes rebuilding a whole software stack with a different toolchain more elaborate
• ...

Full toolchains

Only use full toolchains when building software packages. Never use subtoolchains (e.g. GCC, gompi, ...), except when constructing full toolchains.

e.g. CMake-2.8.4-goolf-1.4.10, CMake-2.8.4-goalf-1.1.0-no-OFED, ...

Advantages

• no worries about which module built with a subtoolchain is compatible with which other modules
• (usually) a single command to build required module (e.g. using --try-toolchain)
• ...

Disadvantages

• yields lots of modules to deal with, which potentially provide basically the same tools
• ...