shmemCC(1)

💖 shmemCC — the Open SHMEM C++ wrapper compiler, bestie edition 💖

okay so. you know how linking Open SHMEM by hand is giving pain? this is the girl who fixes that. shmemCC is your Open SHMEM C++ wrapper compiler (manual page shmemCC(1), from the Open MPI crew, in case you were wondering who to thank 🫶).

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✨ SYNTAX ✨

shmemCC [-showme|-showme:compile|-showme:link] ...

like. that's it. that's the whole vibe. periodt. 💅

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🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

• --showme — okay so this one comes in several different variants (keep reading, bestie, they're all below). none of the variants actually invokes the underlying compiler — no cap. they all just tell you how the underlying compiler would have been invoked if you hadn't passed --showme. the basic --showme outputs the command line that would be executed to compile the program. NOTE: if a non-filename argument gets passed on the command line, the -showme option will not display any additional flags. for example, both shmemCC --showme and shmemCC --showme my_source.c will show all the wrapper-supplied flags. but shmemCC --showme -v will only show the underlying compiler name and -v. (iykyk 🫠)
• --showme:compile — outputs the compiler flags that would have been supplied to the C++ compiler. just the compile girlies ✨
• --showme:link — outputs the linker flags that would have been supplied to the C++ compiler. the link era 🔗
• --showme:command — outputs the underlying C++ compiler command (which may be one or more tokens, so like, don't assume it's a single word).
• --showme:incdirs — outputs a space-delimited (but otherwise undecorated) list of directories that the wrapper compiler would have provided to the underlying C++ compiler to indicate where relevant header files are located. 📂
• --showme:libdirs — outputs a space-delimited (but otherwise undecorated) list of directories that the wrapper compiler would have provided to the underlying linker to indicate where relevant libraries are located. 📚
• --showme:libs — outputs a space-delimited (but otherwise undecorated) list of library names that the wrapper compiler would have used to link an application. for example: "mpi open-rte open-pal util". iconic little list fr.
• --showme:version — outputs the version number of Open MPI. 👑
• --showme:help — outputs a brief usage help message. the "help me bestie" button 🥺

also!! go check the man page for your underlying C++ compiler for other options that can be passed through shmemCC. she's flexible like that.

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

conceptually, the role of these commands is quite simple: transparently add relevant compiler and linker flags to the user's command line that are necessary to compile / link Open SHMEM programs, and then invoke the underlying compiler to actually perform the command. she's a middlewoman, and she's thriving. 💅

as such, these commands are frequently referred to as "wrapper" compilers because they do not actually compile or link applications themselves; they only add in command line flags and invoke the back-end compiler. no cap, that's literally the whole job.

💜 Background

Open MPI is comprised of three software layers: OPAL (Open Portable Access Layer), ORTE (Open Run-Time Environment), and OMPI (Open MPI). there are wrapper compilers for each layer; each layer's wrapper only links in the libraries relevant for that layer. specifically, each layer provides the following wrapper compilers:

• OPAL
  • opalcc and opalc++
• ORTE
  • ortecc and ortec++
• OMPI
  • mpicc, mpic++, mpicxx, mpiCC (only on systems with case-senstive file systems), and mpifort (and its legacy/deprecated names mpif77 and mpif90). note that mpic++, mpicxx, and mpiCC all invoke the same underlying C++ compiler with the same options. all are provided as compatibility with other MPI implementations.

🧚 Fortran Notes

the Fortran wrapper compiler for MPI (mpifort, and its legacy/deprecated names mpif77 and mpif90) can compile and link MPI applications that use any/all of the MPI Fortran bindings: mpif.h, the mpi module, and the mpi_f08 module (assuming Open MPI was installed with support for each of these Fortran bindings). specifically: it is no longer necessary to use different wrapper compilers for applications that use mpif.h vs. applications that use the mpi module — just use mpifort for all Fortran MPI applications. one wrapper, all the Fortran, slay. 💖

note, however, that the Fortran compiler may require additional command-line options to enforce a specific Fortran dialect. for example, in some versions of the IBM XLF compiler, if xlf90 is the underlying Fortran compiler, -qfixed may be necessary to compile fixed-format Fortran source files.

finally, note that mpifort will be inoperative and will return an error on use if Fortran support was not built into the MPI layer. (that's a hard no, bestie 😭)

🌈 Overview

shmemCC is a convenience wrapper for the underlying C++ compiler. translation of an Open SHMEM program requires the linkage of the Open SHMEM-specific libraries which may not reside in one of the standard search directories of ld(1). it also often requires the inclusion of header files what may also not be found in a standard location. (yes, "what may also not be found" — that's the original wording, I don't make the rules 🙈)

shmemCC passes its arguments to the underlying C++ compiler along with the -I, -L and -l options required by Open SHMEM programs.

the Open SHMEM Team strongly encourages using the wrapper compilers instead of attempting to link to the Open SHMEM libraries manually. this allows the specific implementation of Open SHMEM to change without forcing changes to linker directives in users' Makefiles. indeed, the specific set of flags and libraries used by the wrapper compilers depends on how Open SHMEM was configured and built; the values can change between different installations of the same version of Open SHMEM. so like. don't hardcode. trust her. ✨

indeed, since the wrappers are simply thin shells on top of an underlying compiler, there are very, very few compelling reasons not to use shmemCC. when it is not possible to use the wrappers directly, the -showme:compile and -showme:link options should be used to determine what flags the wrappers would have used. for example:

shell$ cc -c file1.c `mpicc -showme:compile`

shell$ cc -c file2.c `mpicc -showme:compile`

shell$ cc file1.o file2.o `mpicc -showme:link` -o my_mpi_program

look at those backticks go 🫶

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🎀 NOTES 🎀

it is possible to make the wrapper compilers multi-lib aware. that is, the libraries and includes specified may differ based on the compiler flags specified (for example, with the GNU compilers on Linux, a different library path may be used if -m32 is seen versus -m64 being seen). this is not the default behavior in a standard build, but can be activated (for example, in a binary package providing both 32 and 64 bit support). more information can be found at:

https://github.com/open-mpi/ompi/wiki/compilerwrapper3264

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📁 FILES 📁

the string that the wrapper compilers insert into the command line before invoking the underlying compiler are stored in a text file created by Open SHMEM and installed to $pkgdata/shmemCC-wrapper-data.txt, where $pkgdata is typically $prefix/share/openmpi, and $prefix is the top installation directory of Open SHMEM.

it is rarely necessary to edit this file, but it can be examined to gain insight into what flags the wrappers are placing on the command line. 👀 lowkey fun to peek at.

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🌱 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES 🌱

by default, the wrappers use the compilers that were selected when Open SHMEM was configured. these compilers were either found automatically by Open MPI's "configure" script, or were selected by the user in the CC, CXX, F77, and/or FC environment variables before "configure" was invoked. additionally, other arguments specific to the compiler may have been selected by configure.

these values can be selectively overridden by either editing the text files containing this configuration information (see the FILES section 👆), or by setting selected environment variables of the form "OSHMEM_value".

valid value names are:

• CPPFLAGS — flags added when invoking the preprocessor (C or C++)
• LDFLAGS — flags added when invoking the linker (C, C++, or Fortran)
• LIBS — libraries added when invoking the linker (C, C++, or Fortran)
• CC — C compiler
• CFLAGS — C compiler flags
• CXX — C++ compiler
• CXXFLAGS — C++ compiler flags
• FC — Fortran compiler
• FCFLAGS — Fortran compiler flags

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⚠️ heads up bestie: you can override this stuff, but the wrapper data file is the source of truth for what flags are actually going on the command line, so look before you leap. 💀

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and that's the whole page, fr fr. this was version 4.1.6, dated Sep 30, 2023, brought to you by the Open MPI / Open SHMEM girlies. go compile something iconic, bestie — you got this. 👑💖✨