Location of mpi.h

Question

I have a code on my computer uses Petsc which depends on mpi. On my computer it works well. I put it on cluster, exported paths of gcc, Petsc and openmpi (although I was using mpich on my computer I hope openmpi will also work) to LD_LIBRARY_PATH and PATH. I also changed paths in makefile. Petsc, gcc, openmpi were all available on cluster so I did not configure anything. When I did make, compiler gave error:

fatal error: mpi.h: No such file or directory

I know I did not give complete information but I can tell more if needed. How can I make the Petsc to know where is mpi.h?

Solution

Typically, you should use mpicc (or mpicxx for C++) to compile instead of gcc (or g++ for C++). These commands are simple wrappers around gcc and g++ that simply add in the appropriate -I/path/to/mpi/includes and -L/path/to/mpi/libs automatically and should be included with your openmpi install. In the absence of that, simply add -I/path/to/mpi/includes in your command to compile the appropriate files. This tells the compiler where to look for the appropriate header files.