[MOAB-dev] Adding tool to trunk/tools okay?

[Jason Kraftcheck]

Dmitry Karpeev wrote:
> I'm thinking about adding a very simple tool mbparread to the tools subdir.

The tools are primarily tools that MOAB users might find useful.  I'm not
sure that the tool you propose fits that catagory.

> This is a stripped down version of mbconvert that merely reads a file
> and reports the times.

Why not just use mbconvert?

> I simply want something a bit more flexible than mbparallelcomm_test
> (plus, that test seems to fail
> for mysterious reasons when mbconvert doesn't): it's easier to drive
> mbconvert using "-O <read_opt>".
> The reason I want to add it to tools is that I would like it rebuilt
> automatically when I rebuild the whole tree.
> 

Almost everyone has code that they'd like rebuild automatically.  That isn't
sufficient justification, IMO, to add it to the MOAB build system as a tool
we provide to users.

> Let me know if this is okay.
> 

It isn't my decision to make.  However, I generally prefer not to duplicate
code and/or functionality unnecessarily.  Some things you might want to
consider are:
  1) Is this something that is useful to users?
     1.a) Sufficiently useful that we want to maintain it from now on?
  2) Is there no existing tool that can be used (e.g. mbconvert)?
     2.a) Is there an existing tool that could be used with minor
          modifications?

Also, the tool you are proposing seems to duplicate functionality in
mbparallelcomm_test that was intended for exactly the same purpose.  Why not
just fix/modify mbparallelcomm_test?

- jason