[petsc-dev] We need to cleanup viewers

[Jed Brown]

Barry Smith <bsmith at mcs.anl.gov> writes:
>     If a user calls XXX() and it doesn’t do what they expect, how do
>     they figure out what is wrong? It is called debugging and usually
>     it is because what they expect is not what it does.

I have to say, my first instinct in such cases, especially when working
with an unfamiliar code base, is that the line invoking the viewer is
never reached or that the output has been redirected somewhere.  I do
not understand why they do it, but the vast majority of large projects I
have encountered involve perversely-contorted debugging.

Sometimes we want XXView(X,V) to mean "Hey X, anything you feel like
talking about?" and other times we mean "X, serialize yourself!"  When
the latter is deeply nested and chooses to ignore the request, it causes
confusion.  Maybe it's not important enough to fix in the near term.
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