Error: unknown type name 'wchar_t' with NVIDIA compiler

In one of EPFL’s GPU clusters (Izar) we need to use OpenMPI compiled with Nvidia’s compilers to have direct GPU-to-GPU communication in MPI4jax, and @inailuig found out how to do it.

I’ll post the instructions here (just for the sake of completeness)

#for the env:
module load nvhpc/21.2-mpi gcc/8.4.0 python/3.7.7

export NVHPC="/ssoft/spack/arvine/v1/opt/spack/linux-rhel7-haswell/gcc-4.8.5/nvhpc-21.2-eso63gmamwuohzzccpew522i7ryqjb46/Linux_x86_64/21.2"

export OPENMPI_ROOT="${NVHPC}/comm_libs/openmpi"
export CUDA_ROOT="${NVHPC}/cuda/11.2"

export CUDA_LIBRARY="${CUDA_ROOT}/lib64"
export CUDA_INCLUDE="${CUDA_ROOT}/include"

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="${OPENMPI_ROOT}/lib:${CUDA_LIBRARY}:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}"
export LIBRARY_PATH="${OPENMPI_ROOT}/lib:${CUDA_LIBRARY}:${LIBRARY_PATH}"
export CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH="${OPENMPI_ROOT}/include:${CUDA_INCLUDE}:${CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH}"
export C_INCLUDE_PATH="${OPENMPI_ROOT}/include:${CUDA_INCLUDE}:${C_INCLUDE_PATH}"
export PATH="${OPENMPI_ROOT}/bin:${CUDA_ROOT}/bin:${PATH}"

then we install jax and MPI using a weird flag (don’t ask me why, but it won’t work otherwise. we think it’s because of Nvidia’s compiler being weird)

# activate the python venv
pip install --upgrade "jax[cuda]" -f https://storage.googleapis.com/jax-releases/jax_releases.html
CFLAGS=-noswitcherror pip install mpi4py

Then to compile mpi4jax we need to edit python’s include files

# add this line  to venv/include/python3.7m/pymem.h to fix compile error

#include <stddef.h>

(seems like it’s a python3.7 problem with the nvidia clang; would have to include it in mpi_xla_bridge_gpu.c before Python.h but idk how to do that in cython)

“”"

Now the weird thing is that if I now run

pip install mpi4jax

the installation will fail with error

      In file included from /ssoft/spack/arvine/v1/opt/spack/linux-rhel7-skylake_avx512/gcc-8.4.0/python-3.7.7-drpdlwdbo3lmtkcbckq227ypnzno4ek3/include/python3.7m/Python.h:63,
                       from mpi4jax/_src/xla_bridge/mpi_xla_bridge.c:26:
      /ssoft/spack/arvine/v1/opt/spack/linux-rhel7-skylake_avx512/gcc-8.4.0/python-3.7.7-drpdlwdbo3lmtkcbckq227ypnzno4ek3/include/python3.7m/pymem.h:114:12: error: unknown type name 'wchar_t'
       PyAPI_FUNC(wchar_t*) _PyMem_RawWcsdup(const wchar_t *str);
                  ^~~~~~~

this error suggests that when compiling with pip the compiler is not looking at the include files from the current distribution (that we edited) but to the ones of the original python version.

To workaround we have to run

git clone GitHub.com/mpi4jax/mpi4jax
cd mpi4jax
python setup.py build
python setup.py install

this way pip/python picks up the modified include files.

–

Of course editing the python’s include files is not good. But if users can’t install mpi4jax, it’s our problem. After all, mpi4py compiles just fine. Maybe we can do something to work around Nvidia’s bugs?

[dionhaefner]

Perhaps it’s possible to inject the missing include through the command line? E.g. via CFLAGS.

[dionhaefner]

We should add a Installation troubleshooting section to the docs…

We could do that, on the other hand information like this becomes stale incredibly fast. I would personally just rely on people finding this issue if the same problem crops up again.