fix GCC-system without Intel license

[Flamefire]

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(created using eb --new-pr)

Python MRO causes trouble here due to multi-inheritance:

• SystemCompiler inherits from EB_GCC and EB_ifort
• EB_ifort inherits from EB_icc and both from IntelBase
• prepare_step calls e.g. EB_GCC.prepare_step
• That calls super(EB_GCC, self).prepare_step(*args, **kwargs)
• That ends up calling prepare_step in IntelBase
• That calls prepare_step in ConfigureMake
• Then (IntelBase) continues, then fails:

No viable license specifications found; specify 'license_file', or define $INTEL_LICENSE_FILE or $LM_LICENSE_FILE

This is due to the MRO which here is (<class 'easybuild.easyblocks.generic.systemcompiler.SystemCompiler'>, <class 'easybuild.easyblocks.generic.bundle.Bundle'>, <class 'easybuild.easyblocks.gcc.EB_GCC'>, <class 'easybuild.easyblocks.generic.configuremake.ConfigureMake'>, <class 'easybuild.easyblocks.ifort.EB_ifort'>, <class 'easybuild.easyblocks.icc.EB_icc'>, <class 'easybuild.easyblocks.generic.intelbase.IntelBase'>, <class 'easybuild.framework.easyblock.EasyBlock'>, <class 'object'>)

Only GCC, IntelBase and EasyBlock define a prepare_step so going up from GCC the one in IntelBase is called next.

If there was one in ConfigureMake that one would be called between GCC and IntelBase.

My solution here is to directly call ConfigureMake.prepare_step from GCC which ends in EasyBlock.prepare_step.

This works for now but will cause the same issue if ConfigureMake.prepare_step with a super() call is added at some point.
It also will be a problem if someone inherits (e.g. transitively) from GCC and some other class providing prepare_step and expects both to be called.
I can't think of any other easy solution.

Fixes #2815

[boegel]

@Flamefire It feels a bit backward to make changes to the GCC easyblock for this, can't we fix this in the SystemCompiler easyblock itself?

[Flamefire]

Ah this was the other MRO issue I mentioned in the confcall.

can't we fix this in the SystemCompiler easyblock itself?

I don't see how. The issue is caused by GCC calling super() which is intended if we want to call the methods of all classes in the current hierarchy, which should always be the case for "proper" dependencies. But e.g. SystemCompiler creates a hierarchy where we don't want that.
I guess other easyblocks where we do the same to e.g. change behavior based on version have similar issues, but here it is very visible as the prepare_step of IntelBase cannot be called when using GCC

So the trouble here is that inheritance instead of composition is used for code reuse. We would avoid issues like this, if blocks like SystemCompiler contain an instance of the required easyblock, i.e. either GCC or Intel, instead of inheriting from both.
However that means we need to implement all methods and properties of EasyBlock to direct them to the method of the contained instance.

So no idea besides making sure that any base class in a multi-inheritance scheme doesn't use super().
it all looks very brittle to me.

[boegel]

closing this in favor of #3559

[Flamefire]

Makes sense I guess :-)