RePrimAnd thorn requires GSL 2.0 but does not test for it

[Former user]

The RePrimAnd thorn currently does not document its need for GSL 2.0 in a way Cactus can check.

The meson build file contains the check there is no check in configuration.ccl or build.sh.

[Wolfgang Kastaun]

What would be the cactus way of requiring a minimum GSL version from the externallibraries GSL thorn?

Note: The GSL dependence will probably be removed in the foreseeable future in favor of BOOST.

[Roland Haas]

There’s no real good way. There is a “version” attached with an ExternalLibrary but that does not give any guarantee about the version of the library actually used (in particular when using a system provided one and not building from source).

I have a bad way of testing for GSL in: https://github.com/rhaas80/RePrimAnd/commit/a8f5a6664739b676e1fb44208cae5a790e34e36a but is is kludgy since I basically do a mini autoconf.

Meson of course contains the correct version dependency but for the ET build I am not using Meson (too many dependencies on Python).

[Roland Haas]

Though if this is slated to be removed in favor of Boost anyway, I may just sit it out. Though boost of course is also not part of the ET and not particularly version stable

[Roland Haas]

@Wolfgang Kastaun any updates on GSL dependencies? Also on Boost I guess (is that going to be more or less present given that it will not translate well to GPUs)?

[Wolfgang Kastaun]

The only remaining GSL dependency is monotonic spline interpolation on irregular spaced data. I have already implemented the monotonic spline interpolation for regularly spaced data in another code part, generalizing that is no too much work and I am optimistic to get rid of GSL soon.

The Boost dependency is another matter. I am using a root-finder and ODE integrator from Boost which I don’t want to re-implement. However, those are header-only dependencies, so I think I will try to isolate the required headers and ship them in the repo.