[petsc-dev] define in petscconf PETSc is a development version?

[Toby D. Young]

Dear developers,

I am a satisfied user of PETSc and SLEPc through the interfaces provided
by the deal.ii library. The problem I am trying to deal with is related to
changes in releases of PETSc that break the interfaces we have (because
for better or for worse the changes are not backward compatible).

This is all fine, and generally I try to keep on top of the changes in
releases of PETSc and keep the deal.ii nterfaces as up-to-date as
possible. No complaints so far.

Which brings me to the real problem at hand.

Recently I am wanting to use the development version of PETSc (and SLEPc)
to take advantage of some of the newer features. Unfortunately the way we
identify the version of PETSc in deal.ii can not distinguish between a
development version (which currently breaks the interface) and the latest
release, since the identifications are both PETSc-3.0.0.

Rather than keep track of patch numbers, which is too much for me to
maintain, it would be useful to have an identifier with the petsc-dev that
distinguishes the development version from releases. Then, when the
development PETSc becomes a release it is relatively simple for me to keep
the deal.ii interfaces up-to-date (since I just convert our interfaces
from the PETSc development version to a release version accordingly).

I was thinking something like this in include/petscversion.h
+ #define PETSC_VERSION_DEV = 1
for the development version and set this to 0 (or delete the line
entirely) when this becomes the next release version of PETSc. Sadly, this
is the best solution I can come up with...

Is something like this possible to add to petsc-dev? Perhaps there is a
better way to autodect that the PETSc version is in fact a development
version?

Can anyone suggest something to me please?

Thanks.
Best,
	Toby


-----

Toby D. Young
Assistant Professor
Philosophy-Physics
Polish Academy of Sciences
Warszawa, Polska

www:   http://www.ippt.gov.pl/~tyoung
skype: stenografia