Building code_aster on Ubuntu 24.04

[fsimonis]

This is probably also valid for Ubuntu 22.04.

Building code_aster 14.6.0 (stable) is currently not possible due to a row of issues.

import imp

The setup script and some dependency python scripts use the deprecated and now removed import imp. As the dependencies are nested in archives, patching isn't easy.

Workaround for me was to add the following to the /lib/python3.12/sitecustomize.py the usercustomize.py would be less invasive though:

import importlib
import sys
sys.modules['imp'] = importlib

mumps

This dependency has a row of Error: Type mismatch in argument errors in file mpi.f. export FCFLAGS=-fallow-argument-mismatch solves this issue

mfront

This dependency has missing type errors in C++ files.

tfel

A massive amount of no type named X and X is not member of std errors. Also access to struct members which aren't found

[MakisH]

Thanks for the detailed investigation and summary! These are some of the issues me and @IshaanDesai also faced in the context of upgrading the VM to Ubuntu 22.04 (https://github.com/precice/vm/pull/45#issuecomment-2007699833).

Now that we have a build of the VM with preCICE v3, which includes code_aster, I think we should:

• Upgrade to Ubuntu 24.04
• Disable the code_aster step in the provisioning
• Wait for the next stable release of code_aster

We don't use this adapter in any other CI workflow at the moment, and it is not that users ask for this every day. Besides, if we have issues building it in newer versions, users will have the same issue.

[fsimonis]

Another interesting observation is that code_aster bundles a lot of dependencies that are also dependencies of PETSc.

This should lead to version conflicts when loading these libraries at runtime.

https://ubuntu.pkgs.org/22.04/ubuntu-universe-arm64/libpetsc-real3.15_3.15.5+dfsg1-1build2_arm64.deb.html

Namely: mumps blas hdf5 scotch