Deprecation of MPIR in favor of PMIx, but PMIx not functional equivalent to MPIR (yet)

Background information

What version of Open MPI are you using? (e.g., v1.10.3, v2.1.0, git branch name and hash, etc.)

v4.0.0

Describe how Open MPI was installed (e.g., from a source/distribution tarball, from a git clone, from an operating system distribution package, etc.)

From distribution tarball.

Please describe the system on which you are running

n/a

---

Details of the problem

Open MPI v4 has seen the deprecation of MPIR (#5974) and the MPIR support code will be completely removed in next summer’s release.

However, the very important use case of launching an MPI job using mpirun under the control of a debugger is currently not supported by PMIx. Since a while I work together with @rhc54 as part of RFC23 to add support for this use case in PMIx, but this is still in progress.

I mainly opened this ticket for wider visibility of the issue and to make the case for MPIR not being removed before PMIx debugger support can do the same as MPIR.

Launching an MPI job using mpirun under the control of a debugger

$ tool mpirun -n 64 ./hello_mpi.exe

A use case which MPIR easily allows, because it is how MPIR works:

1. launch mpirun under a debugger, for example GDB
2. enable MPIR, i.e. set MPIR_being_debugged=1
3. request mpirun to wait at a well defined location, i.e. break MPIR_Breakpoint
4. where the debugger can read the proctable and attach to individual MPI processes, i.e. print MPIR_proctable@MPIR_proctable_size
5. release all processes

This is certainly how we use MPIR in Arm DDT and I imagine other debuggers as well.

The advantage of allowing the user to start an MPI job directly with mpirun (under the control of a debugger) is that it is very convenient for users, for example they do not need to learn the idiosyncrasies of how each debugger maps certain mpirun arguments, such as -np, -cpu-set or -host. Or worse, the debugger might not even be aware of certain mpirun arguments and thus will not allow to set them. Ditto for PMIx: A debugger can not be aware of every possible mpirun argument to PMIx parameter mapping and it is also not appropriate to offload PMIx internals to users.

MPIR deprecation warning as seen with GDB only reproducer

Just leaving this here for completeness.

gdb --args mpirun -n 2 ./hello_c
No symbol table is loaded.  Use the "file" command.
GNU gdb (GDB) 7.12.1
...
Reading symbols from mpirun...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
(gdb) start
Temporary breakpoint 1 at 0x400e10
Starting program: /.../mpirun -n 2 ./hello_c
...
Temporary breakpoint 1, 0x0000000000400e10 in main ()
(gdb) set MPIR_being_debugged=1
(gdb) break MPIR_Breakpoint
Breakpoint 2 at 0x7ffff7bab5b0: file orted/orted_submit.c, line 184.
(gdb) cont
Continuing.
...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Open MPI has detected that you have attached a debugger to this MPI
job, and that debugger is using the legacy "MPIR" method of
attachment.

Please note that Open MPI has deprecated the "MPIR" debugger
attachment method in favor of the new "PMIx" debugger attchment
mechanisms.

*** This means that future versions of Open MPI may not support the
*** "MPIR" debugger attachment method at all.  Specifically: the
*** debugger you just attached may not work with future versions of
*** Open MPI.

You may wish to contact your debugger vendor to inquire about support
for PMIx-based debugger attachment mechanisms. Meantime, you can
disable this warning by setting the OMPI_MPIR_DO_NOT_WARN envar to 1.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thread 1 "mpirun" hit Breakpoint 2, MPIR_Breakpoint () at orted/orted_submit.c:184
184	}
(gdb) quit
A debugging session is active.

	Inferior 1 [process 372] will be killed.

Quit anyway? (y or n) y

[hppritcha]

Thanks very much for documenting your concerns here. This will serve as a useful starting point for discussing the current plans wrt MPIR deprecation and a PMIx approach.

A number of people in my organization have also expressed concerns about the current plan for Open MPI support (or lack of it) for MPIR.

[rhc54]

Just to be fair here: as @dirk-schubert-arm states, we have been working on the PMIx support off-and-on for awhile now. The support is nearly complete, only lacking the last piece to support launching mpiexec under the debugger - this part is working, but needs the ability to modify the mpiexec command line. I'll be working on that soon and hope to have it all completed around the end of the year.

The plan was to bring this into the OMPI master branch in first quarter next year so it has at least six months before being released. We would then allow both MPIR and PMIx support exist in parallel for some period of time before removing MPIR - the length of that time is dependent on someone being willing to pick up the MPIR code.

To this date, two years after our initial announcement, nobody has been willing to take up maintenance of the MPIR support. One should keep that in mind when discussing this issue.

[jjhursey]

In the meantime, folks can suppress the warning by setting the envar: OMPI_MPIR_DO_NOT_WARN=1

[jsquyres]

@rhc54 and @jjhursey make good points. Let's make sure our position is clear: if someone is willing to take up the maintenance of MPIR in Open MPI, we're open to having a discussion about it. Ralph is currently our sole maintainer for the MPIR Open MPI infrastructure (which is not trivial), and he's going to retire. We need another maintainer, or that code will bit rot [1].

[1] From the Tao of Programming:

A well-used door needs no oil on its hinges.
A swift-flowing stream does not grow stagnant.
A deer blends perfectly into the forest colors.
Software rots if not used.

[david-edwards-arm]

I believe this ticket can be closed, now the relevant functionality (launching an MPI job using mpirun under the control of a debugger) is supported in v5.0.x.