Subject: [bug#77537] [PATCH 0/2] gnu: netcdf-cxx4: Move netcdf to the propagated-inputs

From: Luca Cirrottola <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2025 13:55:06 +0200 (CEST)

Hello Andreas,

> Should it not be possible to replace openmpi by mpich, say? So the users
> would be required to add any MPI library, not necessarily openmpi, to
> their profile. Or is this just theory and not practice? (If I were right,
> then the package might as well be renamed to "hdf5-mpi".)

I see your point and sorry I didn't anticipate it. Here we need an MPI
implementation to run, but not a specific one (and yes, it is quite normal
to juggle from one MPI library to another). So I retire my proposition about
this.

>> since "netcdf-cxx4" is a C++ interface to the C library "netcdf", I think the
>> latter should be a propagated input.
> 
> There would be no problem with the library ("ldd libnetcdf-cxx4.so"
> shows that the absolute path to the libnetcdf library is there), but
> the include file requires netcdf.h. So here I agree; the reason should
> be given in a comment in the packages.

Here it is less ambiguous, netcdf-cxx4 cannot live without netcdf and there
is no other implementation that could be used at runtime.

For the future, should I interpret a propagated input as "something that is
needed runtime, and should not be replaced by another implementation"?

> 
> I have adapted the commit message and pushed this second patch.
> 

Thanks!
Luca