Fail to link MPI apps with "--enable-static --disable-shared" master builds; missing zlib symbols

[jsquyres]

Building master with --enable-static --disable-shared builds and installs ok, but when you try to build an MPI application, it fails to link, complaining that it can't find zlib symbols.

For example: https://mtt.open-mpi.org/index.php?do_redir=3212 -- the behavior is basically this:

$ mpicc hello_c.c -o hello
/home/jsquyres/bogus/lib/libopen-pal.a(compress_zlib.o): In function `pmix_compress_zlib_compress_block':
compress_zlib.c:(.text+0x8e): undefined reference to `deflateInit_'
compress_zlib.c:(.text+0xa8): undefined reference to `deflateBound'
compress_zlib.c:(.text+0xc9): undefined reference to `deflateEnd'
compress_zlib.c:(.text+0xf9): undefined reference to `deflateEnd'
compress_zlib.c:(.text+0x14c): undefined reference to `deflate'
compress_zlib.c:(.text+0x15e): undefined reference to `deflateEnd'
/home/jsquyres/bogus/lib/libopen-pal.a(compress_zlib.o): In function `pmix_compress_zlib_uncompress_block':
compress_zlib.c:(.text+0x349): undefined reference to `inflateInit_'
compress_zlib.c:(.text+0x39b): undefined reference to `inflate'
compress_zlib.c:(.text+0x3aa): undefined reference to `inflateEnd'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status

The issue is that we recently removed the "compress" framework from OPAL in 66da0c6 (because nothing was using it). Therefore, the wrapper compiler flags no longer get -lz (or whatever "compress" library was selected). But that compress framework effectively migrated over to PMIx, where it is still used. But there's nothing propagating wrapper compiler flags up from PMIx's configure script to Open MPI's configure script.

[gpaulsen]

Today @jsquyres reported that he and @bwbarrett discussed and that Brian is working on.
Adding Severity: critical, as this may impact both static and non-static builds.

[gpaulsen]

@bwbarrett Is this work, part of the current configury work you're working on, or is this separate?

[bwbarrett]

I'm not sure why this bug got assigned to me? No, this is not something I intend to fix as part of my patch series. I'm not entirely sure what the fix will be. With PMIx as a stand-alone project, dependency management of libraries just got really hard.

[rhc54]

I would have naively thought that the static build flag would propagate down to PMIx, which would then slurp libz into its static library - yes? So when OMPI then slurps libpmix into its static library, it all should wind up complete.

It sounds like the problem really is that the PMIx compress/zlib component isn't properly slurping in libz when configured static - correct?

[rhc54]

This now works on master