doc: start with known issues section (#3722)

2 files changed, 38 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/lib/spack/docs/index.rst b/lib/spack/docs/index.rst
index 2e99e96a3e..579d222346 100644
--- a/lib/spack/docs/index.rst
+++ b/lib/spack/docs/index.rst
@@ -51,6 +51,7 @@ or refer to the full manual below.
    basic_usage
    workflows
    tutorial_sc16
+   known_issues
 
 .. toctree::
    :maxdepth: 2
diff --git a/lib/spack/docs/known_issues.rst b/lib/spack/docs/known_issues.rst
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..aad0358cb1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/lib/spack/docs/known_issues.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+============
+Known Issues
+============
+
+This is a list of known bugs in Spack. It provides ways of getting around these
+problems if you encounter them.
+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------
+Default variants are not taken into account during concretization
+-----------------------------------------------------------------
+
+**Status:** Expected to be fixed in the next release
+
+Current conretization algorithm does not take into account default values
+of variants when adding extra constraints to the spec via CLI. For example
+you may enounter the following error when trying to specify which MPI provider
+to use
+
+.. code-block:: console
+
+   $ spack install hdf5 ^openmpi
+   ==> Error: hdf5 does not depend on openmpi
+
+although the hdf5 package contains
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+   variant('mpi', default=True, description='Enable MPI support')
+   depends_on('mpi', when='+mpi')
+
+A workaround is to explicitly activate the variant related to the dependency:
+
+.. code-block:: console
+
+   $ spack install hdf5+mpi ^openmpi
+
+See https://github.com/LLNL/spack/issues/397 for further details.