SCOTCH-6.0.5 wrong version downloaded: upgrade or downgrade?

[smoors]

the version downloaded in SCOTCH-6.0.5-foss-2018b.eb is actually 6.0.4 (even though it downloads as scotch_6.0.5.tar.gz). In fact, version 6.0.5 does not exist, only versions 6.0.5a and 6.0.6.

possible solutions:

1. downgrade to 6.0.4. this has the least chance of introducing new regressions.
2. change to 6.0.5a. the name suggests it to be an alpha version.
3. upgrade to 6.0.6. this should in theory have less bugs than previous versions.

here is the list of easyconfigs depending on it:
o/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM-6-foss-2018b.eb: ('SCOTCH', '6.0.5'),
o/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM-5.0-20180108-foss-2018a.eb: ('SCOTCH', '6.0.5'),
o/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM-v1806-foss-2018b.eb: ('SCOTCH', '6.0.5'),
o/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM-6-intel-2018a.eb: ('SCOTCH', '6.0.5'),
o/OpenFOAM/OpenFOAM-5.0-20180108-intel-2018a.eb: ('SCOTCH', '6.0.5'),
d/DOLFIN/DOLFIN-2018.1.0.post1-foss-2018a-Python-3.6.4.eb: ('SCOTCH', '6.0.5'),
t/Trilinos/Trilinos-12.12.1-foss-2018a-Python-3.6.4.eb: ('SCOTCH', '6.0.5'),
p/PETSc/PETSc-3.9.3-foss-2018a.eb: ('SCOTCH', '6.0.5'),

[boegel]

@smoors Ugh, nice catch...

I'm strongly inclined to fix this going forward, i.e. by renaming to 6.0.6 and downloading the corresponding source tarball. In theory that could introduce regressions, but on the other hand SCOTCH 6.0.4 is pretty old (released March 2015), so jumping to 6.0.6 is more sensible imho...

But I'd like to get some feedback from others on this... @bartoldeman, @akesandgren, @migueldiascosta: thoughts?

We should also try and come up with a sanity check that prevents this from happening again in the future.
@smoors Is there anything we can check in the SCOTCH installation directory to verify which version was installed? Like the version being mentioned in a header file or something like that?

[akesandgren]

I say move forward if possible, but check a bunch of scotch users (codes) first.

[smoors]

in include/scotch.h:
#define SCOTCH_VERSION 6
#define SCOTCH_RELEASE 0
#define SCOTCH_PATCHLEVEL 6

or we can do a simple sanity_check_command:
acpl -V 2>&1|grep "version 6\.0\.6"

[boegel]

@akesandgren Check how? Of course we'll make sure that all easyconfigs that currently use SCOTCH 6.0.5 still build, but are you suggesting further testing beyond that (and if so, how)?

[akesandgren]

That software using Scotch builds and passes their tests. That's all. Anything else we'll have to deal with later... OpenFOAM is especially sensitive to scotch.

[boegel]

fixed in #7159, sanity check enhanced in easybuilders/easybuild-easyblocks#1580