Testing: fix unintended interactions between tests, part 2 (#16429)

This fixes some errors with setting up test configuration. These
errors do not cause current Spack tests to fail but do create
red herring issues elsewhere (see #15666). Fixing these errors
leads to more errors in tests that depended on the original
misconfigured state, so those are also addressed here.

This is an update to #16003 which accounts for some unit tests with
conflicting config/mutable_config fixtures. These conflicts were
not exposed until the mutable_config fixture was fixed. Details are
included below. The change which builds on #16003 is prefixed with
"(new)".

* For tests that use the real Spack package repository, the config
  needs to avoid using MPI providers that are not intended to be
  installed by Spack. Without this, it is possible that Spack tests
  which concretize the MPI virtual will end up trying to use an
  implementation that it shouldn't (e.g. one that is always
  provided externally). See #15666 for an example.
* The mutable_config test fixture was not initializing the scope
  roots to the right directories (so the resulting config was empty).
* The current_host fixture in the concretize.py tests was using the
  config fixture rather than mutable_config, and was polluting the
  config cache for other tests.
* One test in concretize.py was clearing a nonexistent cache
  (PackagePrefs._packages_config_cache). This reference has been
  removed.
* The test 'test_preferred_compilers' was was depending on cross
  test config pollution to succeed. The initial spec before
  concretization has been updated to updated to be explicit about
  the desired result.
* (new) For tests that use install_mockery and mutable_config,
  replace install_mockery with a separate install_mockery_mutable_config
  fixture that is exactly the same as install_mockery but uses the
  mutable_config fixture to avoid conflicts.

1 files changed, 13 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/lib/spack/spack/cmd/compiler.py b/lib/spack/spack/cmd/compiler.py
index 625466f8c7..c8f52af04d 100644
--- a/lib/spack/spack/cmd/compiler.py
+++ b/lib/spack/spack/cmd/compiler.py
@@ -159,7 +159,19 @@ def compiler_list(args):
     tty.msg("Available compilers")
     index = index_by(spack.compilers.all_compilers(scope=args.scope),
                      lambda c: (c.spec.name, c.operating_system, c.target))
-    ordered_sections = sorted(index.items(), key=lambda item: item[0])
+
+    # For a container, take each element which does not evaluate to false and
+    # convert it to a string. For elements which evaluate to False (e.g. None)
+    # convert them to '' (in which case it still evaluates to False but is a
+    # string type). Tuples produced by this are guaranteed to be comparable in
+    # Python 3
+    convert_str = (
+        lambda tuple_container:
+        tuple(str(x) if x else '' for x in tuple_container))
+
+    index_str_keys = list(
+        (convert_str(x), y) for x, y in index.items())
+    ordered_sections = sorted(index_str_keys, key=lambda item: item[0])
     for i, (key, compilers) in enumerate(ordered_sections):
         if i >= 1:
             print()