[petsc-dev] getting ready for PETSc release

[Jed Brown]

Matthew Knepley <knepley at gmail.com> writes:

> As far as I know, neither can do FV stuff which this is going to
> do. 

Where are your Riemann solve, characteristic reconstruction, and
boundary conditions interfaces?  You already used the generic namespace
for a volumetric term that doesn't even exist in FV formulations.

> Maybe MOOSE does. However, neither of those has good integration with
> the solver (I have discussed this personally with Roy and Derek and
> they agree).

You have to be able to formulate a similar scope of problems before you
get to argue fine points of supporting geometric multigrid and the like.
FWIW, it does not support the solve structure we use in pTatin so gives
up significant performance relative to existing packages that use solver
algorithms you want.

>> think this belongs in PETSc, definitely not in such prominent namespace.
>>
>
> I don't know why you think this is so bad. I picked a name because I needed
> a name. Its not DM, its a collection of DMs.

It's a very framework-style name with generic connotations used for
something extremely specific.

>> I also cannot imagine that this interface is stable, so even if this
>> sort of thing goes into PETSc, there's no use having it in the release.
>>
>
> We have a bunch of stuff that is not completely stable. I am not sure
> what this kind of conservatism buys us.

Exploratory programming in a release using a prominent namespace will
encourage people to try using it, then have a bad experience when it (a)
does not work for their problem and (b) is changed soon after the
release.  I would rather that exploration happen in a different package
that users can opt into.


I like developing library code in PETSc, and often look for ways to
formulate a new idea to make it appropriate for PETSc.  But some things
just make more sense in a separate package.  If there is a technical
problem with distributing such a package, we should solve that problem.
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