[petsc-dev] Need a new name for DMDAGetOwnershipRanges

[Barry Smith]

On Nov 29, 2010, at 4:17 PM, Matthew Knepley wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 4:09 PM, Jed Brown <jed at 59a2.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 23:04, Barry Smith <bsmith at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
> Changing the name means introducing a new concept that doesn't exist elsewhere and boy do I hate having tons of concepts in PETSc.
> 
> Agree. 
> 
>    Plus few sane people would use this routine so changing its meaning won't effect many end users.
> 
> Disagree.  I think it's pretty common (I know at least five people, including myself, who have done this independently) to create two or more DAs that are compatible (2D matches with 3D, or cell-centered and one node-centered) and the only robust way to do these things is to pass lx,ly,lz along to the next Create (perhaps with some modifications).
> 
> This does scream out for an API extension, DADuplicate(), with the same kind of semantics as VecDuplicate().

   Doesn't work because the new DA needed is fundamentally a different type of DA then the original, it is not a duplicate.

   barry

> 
>    Matt
>  
> Jed
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their experiments lead.
> -- Norbert Wiener