Disable debugging features

[pentschev]

Comment:

I'm curious if there's a reason why the UCX package is not doing release builds, currently ucx/configure is used, but the UCX repo provides a ucx/contrib/configure-release file that disables some features that are generally better suited for a debug build, which may also be somewhat detrimental to performance.

Is there a reason to keep building in the way it is currently build, or should we consider doing release builds as described above? I'm happy to submit a patch for that, unless someone has a reason why we should keep the build as it currently is.

[leofang]

I am sure @jakirkham would know better the reason, to me it's simply my lack of knowledge of the proper way to build UCX. I'd say PRs are definitely welcomed.

[pentschev]

Thanks Leo for the quick reply, I opened #111 to address that.

[jakirkham]

Yeah changing this seems reasonable.

The main issue is to make sure UCX isn't changing ABI compatibility of the libraries on rebuild (this can happen as debug libraries sometimes use different symbols). If it does, we might need to think harder about this change to minimize breakage of existing binaries (or coordinate it with a new release).

Most configure scripts have an --enable-debug flag that gets passed to enable debug mode. One can pass --disable-debug mode to be explicit, but that would already be the default. Had assumed this was the case with UCX, but didn't realize something non-standard was done here (maybe there is a reason for this?). Asking if this can be improved on in issue ( openucx/ucx#8642 ).

[jakirkham]

Digging deeper into configure-release, it appears it passes --disable-debug along with a few other flags related to logging and assertions back to configure.

[pentschev]

I'm not sure whether ABI is changed or not to be honest. But I agree with you, maybe waiting for the next UCX release is more appropriate to reduce breakage. What would be the best way to ensure we don't forget about that when the new release is out?

[jakirkham]

Maybe we should do this as part of 1.14.0?