[petsc-dev] coding style

[Munson, Todd]

>> I do not understand this.  The developer API will be the same for all 
>> solvers.  What a solver does internally to reformulate is its own 
>> problem.  I am more worried about providing consistent 
>> information to the users.
> 
> As far as I understand it, there is no API for developing constrained optimization solvers yet. When I last looked at the code, I didn’t see fields for duality multipliers in the Tao object, which is why I rolled my own vector of duality multipliers in TAOSQPTR, and why I assume Matt did the same in TAOIPM. I am asking these questions to understand how such an API might be designed, because I may end up adding a pull request implementing parts of it.

The part of the API inside of TAO related to multipliers is the computedual
operation.  Right now, its only defined for bound constrained problems and
needs to be fixed for general constraints.

But if we are going through the effort of refactoring the code, we might as 
well attempt to have a proper redesign of the code before I start "fixing"
everything.  Think about requirements and usability, simplicity for 90% 
of the users, playing well with the PETSc philosophy, ...

I don't think Matt did the TAOIPM method, but rather Jason.

> I agree; I have been thinking about this issue as well, which is why I asked Matt in pull request #506 about some of these ideas.

> 
> Please do. I’m interested in contributing methods to TAO because I like using PETSc, it seems like the most expedient way to get a solver my project can use with features we need, and I have great respect for the software you guys put out. If there is anything I can do to expedite this process, e.g., things I should read/practice, let me know.

Now that I am back on TAO development "full time," I should eventually
get notified to do code reviews for TAO related requests and respond
to them quickly.  I will figure out how to look at your pull request 
tomorrow though.

Right now, I am concentrating on addressing known problems in some 
methods, but longer term, really just want to refactor the whole 
thing.

Todd.