Question

I have several compilers with the same name but of different versions or location.
The ./configure script seems to stop at the first it finds in PATH. How can I tell Automake to choose one of them according to a custom rule ? I already have a macro which can check the compiler version.

I would like to avoid setting the path by hand (with the FC variable) as it can be cumbersome to type each time the whole path.

In my case, several MPI wrapper compilers are located in different directories with the same name (and added to the PATH by the user).

The idea would be to use something like ./configure --with-intel to find and select the IntelMPI compiler.

Answer 1

My solution : copy the search strategy of configure in a macro, with a custom matching criterion. Parsing PATH is done by setting the IFS variable (which is already defined in configure). In Bash, finding all the executables would be something like :

#!/bin/bash

IFS=":"
exe="mpif90"
for dir in $PATH
do
   if test -f "$dir/$exe"; then
     custom_test($dir/$exe)
   fi
done

Note: This is recommanded in the manual

If you need to check the behavior of a program as well as find out whether it is present, you have to write your own test for it.