[petsc-dev] Integrating PFLOTRAN, PETSC & SAMRAI

[Jed Brown]

On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 15:09, Matthew Knepley <knepley at gmail.com> wrote:

> When dealing with tracking package changes I've found the best way is to
> track them continuously so each new issue (due to a change) gets fixed
> immediately rather than waiting until a bunch of stuff is broken before
> fixing it.


My thoughts, not specific to SAMRAI:

When we make an API change in PETSc, we have to update all the PETSc
examples. If I know that a certain API change impacts a library that I
occasionally interact with, I sometimes go update that library at the same
time. For example, I have done this a few times for Libmesh. If the project
has a public repository, straightforward build system, and a test suite that
is easy to run, this doesn't take a great deal of effort. This is, if the
time required to update a call, test it, and submit a patch is actually
dominated by editing source code, then it's not such a big deal. Note that
for many projects, the time ratio is more like 3 minutes to edit the code
and an hour to update source, reconfigure, build, test, and submit.

Obviously we can't promise this for lots of libraries, but it's much more
likely to happen if you make it really easy. Having nightly tests obviously
helps too.
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