changes for next PETSc release

[Matthew Knepley]

On Sun, Mar 16, 2008 at 7:38 PM, Barry Smith <bsmith at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
>
>
>      There are two significant  changes I'd like to see before the
>  next PETSc release:
>
>  1) remove the overly complicated (from a user perspective) matrix
>  subclassing for the various external
>       matrix solver packages and replace with MatSolverSetType() -
>  mat_solver_type <type> that simply
>       flips the various factorization/solver functions with those
>  requested and

This seems not too hard. Just a layer on top to run the code a user must
run now.

>  2) properly name-space PETSc by putting a Petsc in front of all PETSc
>  objects, function names etc
>       (this will require changing a few names also to keep them below
>  the 32 character limit). This will
>       be very painful change for some users who are not comfortable
>  ever changing code, hence I hesitate
>       to do it, but it is the right thing to do and should have been
>  done originally.

I guess I still do not see the need for this. NIMROD is a not a sufficient
driver in my mind. If we really want namespaces, use a real language that
has namespaces. There are plenty. If we are still using C, I say we stick
with the old division. The imposition of this much pain on the overwhelming
majority of users seems unjustified.

Namespaces issues can be trivially fixed in say C++, which we should do.

    Matt

>      Maybe we can do a release in around a couple of months, it would
>  be 2.4
>
>     Barry
>
>
>



-- 
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