[petsc-dev] post 3.1 reorganization of PETSc DMMG code

[Jed Brown]

On Tue, 6 Apr 2010 03:46:37 +0200, Matthew Knepley <knepley at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think we do. If we do not, then we should.

I think the primary failure here is setting options on objects that
can't be created until setup (typically PCSetUp).  These objects have a
well-defined prefix so they are controllable through the options
database, but there is no way for the user to get hold of them because
the user lacks control at the time when they are created.  Perhaps this
can be resolved, but it's tricky.

> > > Strings are ALWAYS a bad interface.
> >
> > But they are generic...

Some people, when confronted with an API extensibility problem think "I
know, I'll use strings".  Now they have two problems.

In particular, they now have two APIs, except that the second has no
type checking and typically ill-defined semantics.

Jed