Recent change in MMM-physics breaks MPAS-Model

[eap]

NCAR/MMM-physics#16 was submitted several hours ago breaking jedi-bundle which depends on MPAS-Model 8.2.1. I'm not sure if the change breaks all existing tags of MPAS-Model or just 8.2.1, although the nature of the issue makes me suspect that all builders of MPAS-model are going to encounter the issue.

Build error

 Building Fortran object mpas/src/core_atmosphere/CMakeFiles/core_atmosphere.dir/physics/physics_wrf/module_bl_gwdo.F.o
/workdir/bundle/mpas/src/core_atmosphere/physics/physics_wrf/module_bl_gwdo.F:215:49:

  215 |                     ,errmsg=errmsg,errflg=errflg)
      |                                                 1
Error: Missing actual argument for argument 'omax' at (1)
make[2]: *** [mpas/src/core_atmosphere/CMakeFiles/core_atmosphere.dir/build.make:2769: mpas/src/core_atmosphere/CMakeFiles/core_atmosphere.dir/physics/physics_wrf/module_bl_gwdo.F.o] Error 1

Suspected root cause

I found this line of code in core_atmosphere/CMakeLists.txt:102-108 which references NCAR/MMM-Physics without a git tag or hash. So any new changes that break API compatibility will end up breaking core_atmosphere.

if(NOT EXISTS ${ATMOSPHERE_CORE_PHYSICS_MMM_DIR})
    set(PHYSICS_MMM_REPO_URL "https://github.com/NCAR/MMM-physics")
    execute_process(COMMAND git clone ${PHYSICS_MMM_REPO_URL} ${ATMOSPHERE_CORE_PHYSICS_MMM_DIR}
                    RESULT_VARIABLE GIT_CLONE_RESULT
                    OUTPUT_VARIABLE GIT_CLONE_OUTPUT
                    ERROR_VARIABLE GIT_CLONE_ERROR)
    if(NOT GIT_CLONE_RESULT EQUAL 0)

[mgduda]

This issue should only affect builds that use CMake, while builds using GNU Make should be unaffected since our Makefile obtains a specific tag of the MMM-physics repository using manage_externals.

@eap Are you attempting to build stand-alone MPAS-Atmosphere, or are you building something like MPAS-JEDI?

[guoqing-noaa]

@eap FYI, if you don't have to use the latest physics_mmm, I have a PR at ufs-community#231 fixing the MPAS-Model (and MPAS-JEDI) CMake building issue.

[eap]

@guoqing-noaa - that looks like a useful change. I'm a little hamstrung on testing it. Our mpas-jedi integration uses MPAS-model v8.2.1 and integrating with the develop branch will require some work. I tried patching a similar change back to 8.2.3 but it appears that some api-breaking changes were included in 8.2.3. I was hoping that we could back-port this to 8.2 but it appears that we have integration work no matter what approach we take.

For now I've disabled mpas-jedi and MPAS-model from our CI system and bundle.

[uturuncoglu]

JFYI, I am also getting same error with head of develop branch.

[fcvdb]

A long term fix that would use the tags from the External.cfg file is being worked on: #1421.

[svahl991]

Is this still an issue now that #1421 is merged? Or can this be closed?

[eap]

@svahl991 - It depends a bit on what is considered “done” here.

The change in #1421 fixes the issue on develop, but the currently published releases are still broken (known to affect 8.2.x and 8.3.x).

From my side, the ideal resolution would be to ensure the released versions are buildable again (e.g., updated tags or equivalent). I understand this would be a fair amout of work. A new release that includes the fix could also resolve it, though that does introduce more work for downstream users to integrate with various API changes.

[fcvdb]

@eap and @svahl991 I opened this issue in the jedi-bundle repo to continue the discussion internally to JCSDA. We can close this one.