[Ncep.list.nems.announce] NEMSAppBuilder problems and fixes

[Samuel Trahan - NOAA Affiliate]

Hi all,

Two problems in the NEMSAppBuilder are causing a lot of trouble right now.
I held off fixing these issues because it will be disruptive to
development, and we've had too many development disruptions already.

Specifically:

1. The NEMSAppBuilder $FULL_MACHINE_ID used to find modulefiles and conf
files has underscores on WCOSS Cray (wcoss_cray) but dots on the IBM parts
of WCOSS (wcoss.phase1, wcoss.phase2).  This was done to match the strange
mix of conventions the various apps were using when the NEMSAppBuilder was
last updated.

2. The NEMSAppBuilder does not delete the configuration files before
running NEMS/src/configure.  This can cause it to inadvertently use old
configuration information if NEMS/src/configure fails.

It turns out, for several weeks now, the NEMSAppBuilder has not been able
to build the NEMSfv3gfs on WCOSS phase 1 and phase 2 due to bug #1 listed
above.  The reason nobody noticed this (including the nightly tests) is
that the NEMSfv3gfs compile.sh was run first, for earlier compsets in the
same test suite.  That compile.sh left behind valid modules.nems,
externals.nems, and ESMFVersionDefine.h.  The NEMSAppBuilder was run next,
to test the fv3_appbuilder compset.  It failed to run configure because it
was looking for configure.fv3.wcoss.phase2 (or phase1) which did not
exist.  However, the NEMSAppBuilder didn't delete the configuration
information compile.sh left behind, so the build continued as if nothing
had gone wrong (bug #2 listed above).

It is possible that all apps will need to make minor changes to their
compsets and appbuilder files as a result of fixing these two bugs.  I'm
going to try this myself on the supported apps first and report the results.

Sincerely,
Sam Trahan
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