[petsc-dev] preparing for a PETSc release

[Ethan Coon]

On Mon, 2011-05-09 at 13:56 -0500, Blaise Bourdin wrote:

I actually think a couple of these should be fixed...

> Also, I have been meaning to send a feature request but have been procrastinating. It deals with named options (as in enum) and fortran: 
> In C, there are 2 ways to handle options: PetscOptionsXXX wrapped in a PetscOptionsBegin/End and PetscOptionsGetXXX.
> The former is nice in that it generates help, but only a subset of the later is implemented in fortran.
> 1. Is a fortran equivalent of the PetscOptionsXXX feasible? I understand that it would require more than just fortran bindings.
> 2. Alternatively, one can implement the options management in C and use PetscBag to convert data from a fortran derived type to a C struct and back. One limitation is that enums again are not supported, but neither are arrays.

The lack of the array has always bugged me, and has caused me to not use a bag at times.  It's straightforward to allow fixed-length arrays in a bag, which is sufficient in all the cases I've needed them for.  The enum extension should be easy as well.  I'm already going over the bag code to add a PetscBagSetOptionsPrefix(), so I'll add support for PetscBagRegister*Array() (in both C and fortran) and look at PetscBagRegisterEnum() (in fortran).


> 3. If neither 1. or 2. is feasible, would it be possible to add fortran support for PetscOptionsGetEnum. Assuming that we use a integer for the enum in fortran, my understanding is that all it would take would be to be able to pass an array of fortran strings as the list argument of PetscOptionsGetEnum.

I'd like this as well.


Ethan

> 
> Lastly, since the changes DA->DMDA and in XXXDestroy are already going make many people angry, is it time to rename Vec PetscVec and Mat PetscMat? 
> 
> Blaise
> 
> On May 9, 2011, at 1:30 PM, Barry Smith wrote:
> 
> > 
> >   I'd like to get a PETSc release, 3.2 out before the summer rush. So let's start checking PETSc-dev much more closely for build problems etc. Satish will set up a release repository for extensive testing in about a week, but even more then get your changes/updates in now.
> > 
> >    Thanks
> > 
> >    Barry
> > 
> > 
> 

-- 
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Ethan Coon
Post-Doctoral Researcher
Applied Mathematics - T-5
Los Alamos National Laboratory
505-665-8289

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~ecoon/
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