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<span id="label-building-fully-static-apps"></span><h1><span class="section-number">11.5. </span>Building fully-static PMIx applications<a class="headerlink" href="#building-fully-static-pmix-applications" title="Permalink to this heading"></a></h1>
<div class="section" id="is-fully-static-really-what-you-need">
<h2><span class="section-number">11.5.1. </span>Is fully-static really what you need?<a class="headerlink" href="#is-fully-static-really-what-you-need" title="Permalink to this heading"></a></h2>
<p>No one ends up in this documentation section by accident.</p>
<p>If you are reading this text, it is likely because you are looking to
solve a problem, and fully-static applications sound like the
right answer. There are two common problems that people think that
fully-static applications will solve:</p>
<ol class="arabic simple">
<li><p>Applications fail to launch because dependent shared libraries
are not found at run-time.</p></li>
<li><p>Filesystem performance when launching at scale is terrible.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>If either of these are your problems, the PMIx community <em>strongly
encourages you to use other mechanisms to fix the problem</em>:
fully-static applications are <em>possible</em>, but are sub-optimal for
other reasons.</p>
<p>The following sections discuss the above problems.</p>
<div class="section" id="finding-dependent-shared-libraries-at-run-time">
<h3><span class="section-number">11.5.1.1. </span>Finding dependent shared libraries at run-time<a class="headerlink" href="#finding-dependent-shared-libraries-at-run-time" title="Permalink to this heading"></a></h3>
<p>If you are running into problems finding shared libraries at run time
— particularly on nodes that are remote from where you have invoked
your launcher — your best bet is to set <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">LD_LIBRARY_PATH</span></code> (or
equivalent mechanism) properly on <em>all</em> nodes (including remote
nodes).</p>
<p>This is an involved topic, but even so, it is generally simpler to
solve this problem than creating and maintaining static builds.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="improving-filesystem-performance-at-scale">
<h3><span class="section-number">11.5.1.2. </span>Improving filesystem performance at scale<a class="headerlink" href="#improving-filesystem-performance-at-scale" title="Permalink to this heading"></a></h3>
<p>Prior to v4.2.0, PMIx compiled a large number of plugins as
individual dynamic shared objects (DSOs) — i.e., individual
files in the filesystem. Many of these DSOs would be opened by each
application process at run time.</p>
<p>This could cause filesystem congestion, particularly when the application is
installed on a network filesystem and a large job is launched: many
nodes will simultaneously communicate with the file server(s), and
potentially need to transfer a large number of small(ish) files.</p>
<p>Starting with v4.2.0, by default, PMIx’s plugins are no longer
built as DSOs. As such, PMIx typically only opens a small number
of shared libraries at launch time. Even if PMIx is installed on
a network filesystem, these libraries are likely to be cached on nodes
over time, and therefore generate a fairly small amount network
filesystem traffic when PMIx-based jobs are launched.</p>
<p>In short: PMIx v5.0.8a1’s impact on network filesystems is
greatly diminished compared to prior versions. Compiling fully-static
applications to eliminate the open-every-DSO-file-at-launch-time
behavior is no longer necessary.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="other-reasons-fully-static-applications-are-bad">
<h3><span class="section-number">11.5.1.3. </span>Other reasons fully-static applications are bad<a class="headerlink" href="#other-reasons-fully-static-applications-are-bad" title="Permalink to this heading"></a></h3>
<p>Here are a few other reasons that fully-static applications are
sub-optimal:</p>
<ol class="arabic">
<li><p>When applications link all of their dependencies statically, the
operating system cannot share code between multiple copies of the
process.</p>
<p>For example, if you launch N copies of your fully-statically-linked
application on a node, it will consume (N *
size_of_the_application) bytes of RAM. Alternately, launching N
copies of a dynamically-linked MPI application — where each
of the copies have the same dependent libraries — will only
load each shared dependent library into RAM once.</p>
<p>In other words: <em>using dynamic linking saves memory.</em></p>
</li>
<li><p>If you disable PMIx’s <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">dlopen</span></code> functionality (which is
necessary to create <em>fully</em>-static MPI applications), you may
lose access to functionality that is dependent on third-party
libraries that cannot operate (or are not provided) as static
libraries. Note that your application also cannot use a
memory manager (such as most MPI libraries do by default).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Are you convinced yet? <em>Please try to avoid building fully-static
applications if at all possible.</em></p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="building-fully-static-pmix-based-applications">
<h2><span class="section-number">11.5.2. </span>Building fully-static PMIx-based applications<a class="headerlink" href="#building-fully-static-pmix-based-applications" title="Permalink to this heading"></a></h2>
<div class="admonition caution">
<p class="admonition-title">Caution</p>
<p>If, after reading all of the above, you are still of the
mind that you want to build fully-static
applications, be aware that fully static linking is not
for the meek, and it is not recommended. But it is
possible, with some caveats.</p>
</div>
<ol class="arabic">
<li><p>You must have static libraries available for <em>everything</em> to which
your program links. This includes PMIx; you must have used the
<code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">--enable-static</span></code> option to PMIx’s <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">configure</span></code> or otherwise
have available the static versions of the PMIx library.</p>
<div class="admonition note">
<p class="admonition-title">Note</p>
<p>Some Linux distributions may not have static versions of
popular Linux libraries by default (e.g., libnuma), or
require additional RPMs to be installed to get the
equivalent static libraries.</p>
</div>
</li>
<li><p>Your application must have been built without a memory manager.
For example, this means that Open MPI must have been configured with the
<code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">--without-memory-manager</span></code> flag.</p>
<div class="admonition important">
<p class="admonition-title">Important</p>
<p>Not including memory manager support can lead to
lower performance when using
OS-bypass networks.</p>
</div>
</li>
</ol>
<p>This is how to configure PMIx to build fully-static libraries on
Linux:</p>
<div class="highlight-sh notranslate"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span>shell$<span class="w"> </span>./configure<span class="w"> </span>--disable-dlopen<span class="w"> </span><span class="se">\</span>
<span class="w"> </span>--enable-static<span class="w"> </span>--disable-shared<span class="w"> </span>...
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>The <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">--disable-shared</span></code> flag is optional; it will prevent PMIx
from <em>also</em> building shared libraries.</p>
<p>Alternatively, you could build PMIx with as many static libraries
as possible, but still preserve <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">dlopen</span></code> functionality by omitting
the <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">--disable-dlopen</span></code> flag:</p>
<div class="highlight-sh notranslate"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span>shell$<span class="w"> </span>./configure<span class="w"> </span>--enable-static<span class="w"> </span>--disable-shared<span class="w"> </span>...
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>This gives you a <em>mostly</em> static build of PMIx, but has the
advantage of preserving at least some dynamic libraries.</p>
<div class="section" id="including-whole-archives">
<h3><span class="section-number">11.5.2.1. </span>Including whole archives<a class="headerlink" href="#including-whole-archives" title="Permalink to this heading"></a></h3>
<p>Some systems may have additional constraints about their support
libraries that require additional steps to produce working
fully-static PMIx-based applications. For example, any library that has its
own run-time plugin system (i.e., that opens dynamically shared
objects (“DSOs”) at run time) will have additional complications in
producing fully-static builds.</p>
<p>In such cases, you generally want to run <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">pmixcc</span> <span class="pre">...</span> <span class="pre">--showme</span></code> to see
the compiler / linker commands that PMIx’s wrapper commands will
use, and then augment those commands with linker arguments for the
static versions of the DSO plugins that you will need at run time.</p>
<p>For example, if you have <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">libfoo.a</span></code> that dynamically loads
<code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">plugin.so</span></code> at run time, you’ll need to have a <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">plugin.a</span></code> and
— assuming the GNU linker — add arguments similar to the
following:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li><p><code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">-static</span></code>: Tell the linker to generate a static executable.</p></li>
<li><p><code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">-Wl,--whole-archive</span> <span class="pre">-lfoo</span> <span class="pre">/path/to/plugin.a</span> <span class="pre">-Wl,--no-whole-archive</span></code>:
Tell the linker to include the entire <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">foo</span></code> library and the entire
<code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">plugin.a</span></code> archive in the executable.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>You can either add these arguments on the command line manually, or
you can <a class="reference internal" href="customizing-wrappers.html#label-customizing-wrapper-compiler"><span class="std std-ref">modify the default behavior of the wrapper compilers</span></a> to hide this complexity from end
users (but be aware that if you modify the wrapper compilers’ default
behavior, <em>all</em> users will be creating static applications!).</p>
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