[petsc-dev] Are there both a function AND a #define to retrieve PETSc version?

[Jed Brown]

Eric Chamberland <Eric.Chamberland at giref.ulaval.ca> writes:

> Le 2016-08-27 à 15:22, Jed Brown a écrit :
>> Barry Smith <bsmith at mcs.anl.gov> writes:
>>>     Well in Eric's case he knows he needs a bug fix in sub minor 3 and wants to generate an error if linked against an earlier one that does not have the bug fix. There needs to be a way for users to indicate if they need above something in the sub minor, doesn't there?
>> Oh, then we can have PetscVersionGet(&major,&minor,&subminor,&release).
>> Or PetscVersionGetMajor(&major), ...
>>
>> Preference?
> Good question!  I am not aware of other libs than MPI, and in MPI the 
> returned value is a string containing eventually a lot a things... 

There is both MPI_Get_version(int *version, int *subversion) and
MPI_Get_library_version(char *version, int *resultlen).

Meanwhile, there is already PetscGetVersion(char *version, size_t len).
If you like parsing strings, it seems like that would serve you purpose.
But if you want to handle it programmatically without needing to parse a
string, then perhaps we should add a PetscGetVersionNumber (more
consistent name than my first suggestion).  What is your peference?

> For me now, what you proposed is enough... but if the most interesting 
> would be to have a function with an API that will not change too much in 
> the future, maybe a string is a better choice. If changing the function 
> API is not an argument, then I prefer a single call than n calls to 
> retreive the complete version.

The problem with a string is that the format of the string can be
changed without changing the API, thus breaking existing code in a
possibly subtly way at run time.  Note that the MPI standard does not
specify the format of MPI_Get_library_version.
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