open TELEMAC-MASCARET The mathematically superior suite of solvers

Metis 5.x.x now allows the installer to define the inteface variable sizes to be 32bit or 64bit. For example the fedora supplied metis is compiled to 64bit on X86_64. Badly matched interfaces cause ill defined results - I received runtime segv errors. There are no compile or link errors - just runtime errors. This is always a problem interfacing between fortan and c code.

To complicate matters, the telemac fortran code interface through partel defines the interface variables as just INTEGER with no size defined. The 'native' size used will depend on compiler and system.

The telemac code could check the metis.h file to see what was set at metis library construction and change its calling behaviour. But this needs to be done. Just recompiling partel forcing default sizes to 64bit will probably cause problems writing and reading binary files which it relies on. A full consideration needs to be made on approaching this problem.

An immediate response to this problem is that it should be highlighted in the installation docs.

I found this problem using the available v7 code but it should carry through all versions if interfacing to metis v5+.

Cheers
John

Hello,

Thank you for this comments -- we will study the problem and check if we can do something at compilation level (should it only be to check the METIS binary assumption).

Note, however, that we it is likely that the METIS would have to adapt to the TELEMAC compilation / configuration rather than the opposite.

Best regards,
Sébastien.