xSDK Community Installation Policies: GNU Autoconf and CMake Options

We are working toward the development of an Extreme-scale Scientific Software Development Kit (xSDK)---a collection of related and complementary software elements that provide the building blocks, tools, models, processes, and related artifacts for rapid and efficient development of high-quality applications.  

As an initial step in creating the xSDK, we have defined and implemented a standard subset of GNU Autoconf and CMake options for xSDK and other HPC packages in order to make the installation process as efficient as possible on standard Linux distributions and Mac OS, as well as on target machines at DOE computing facilities.  Note that we are not requiring that all packages use the same installation software, merely that they follow the same standard procedure with the same option names for installation.  This approach provides maximum flexibility for each package to select the most suitable toolchain to use for its package.