[SYCL] Build issue with the latest commit to SYCL configure wrapper

[abagusetty]

Describe the bug

Using the latest commit (e932cf9) and I was seeing this build error from SYCL Configure wrapper from this latest PR(ae76189). Upon removing several options passed to configure.py, I still keep seeing this python-error.

Since the CI tests nightly, I am not sure if I am missing something very trivial

CC=cc CXX=CC python3 $DPCPP_HOME/llvm/buildbot/configure.py 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/abagusetty/today/llvm/buildbot/configure.py", line 429, in <module>
    ret = main()
  File "/home/abagusetty/today/llvm/buildbot/configure.py", line 421, in main
    args, passthrough_args = parser.parse_known_intermixed_args()
AttributeError: 'ArgumentParser' object has no attribute 'parse_known_intermixed_args'

[npmiller]

parse_known_intermixed_args was added in Python 3.7, I suspect you're using a python version earlier than that?

Upgrading Python version may fix that, alternatively replacing parse_known_intermixed_args with parse_known_args may fix it, although it's not quite as nice.

[abagusetty]

You are right, I was using 3.6.15. Hope this requirement bodes well with users since most OSs installations brings older versions of python. Since this looks like a hard-dependency, was this added to docs.

[npmiller]

I don't think the bump in version was intentional, it seems we've never really documented required python versions. Although to be fair it seems Python 3.6 is no longer supported, it reached end of life in december 2021. Not sure if it's maintained separately by other OSs though.

Either way maybe it's worth switching to parse_known_args as it's slightly more portable, and not a lot worse in functionality. cc @ldrumm

[AlexeySachkov]

I don't think the bump in version was intentional, it seems we've never really documented required python versions. Although to be fair it seems Python 3.6 is no longer supported, it reached end of life in december 2021. Not sure if it's maintained separately by other OSs though.

https://github.com/intel/llvm/blob/sycl/llvm/docs/GettingStarted.rst#software - note that LLVM which we are based on requires Python 3.8 already. I would say that we should copy that requirement into SYCL-specific getting started document and not try and stick to the older version, because there could be other Python scripts (which we inherit from LLVM) that would fail with older Python.

[npmiller]

I agree, it makes a lot of sense to align with LLVM on this. I've opened a PR to update the GetStartedGuide to link to the LLVM required version for Python: #17565

[npmiller]

Closing now as we've merged the documentation update: #17565

Thanks for catching this issue!