please come up with a better and more maintnable solution. like a dict/map module constant.

I don't think that can work... It might for only the name, but we need to determine the version part too, which can't be easily pushed into a dict imho...

the sanity check if tc_comps[0]['version'] == tc_comps[1]['version'] not, that you'll have to double verify. but the rest could be done without any issue like

MAP = {
    ['Clang', 'GCC']: "ClangGCC",
    ...
}

# saniutycheck MAP
set_map = dict([(set(x),(x,v)) for x,v in MAP.items])
if not len(MAP) == len(set_map): raise something
ordered_comp_names, tc_comp_name = set_map[set(comp_names))]
tc_comp_ver='-',join(map(comp_version.get, ordered_comp_names))
# do something to sanity check intel and fix intel version

and deal with the KeyError 😄

@stdweird: remark fixed, it's doable after all...

make it a class constant (will make it a lot easier to create local HMNS) (and indicate in comment that the key is sorted)

make this a single test? tc_comp_name == 'intel' and comp_versions['icc'] != comp_versions['ifort']?