[petsc-dev] Statistics on the popularity of PETSc

[Jacob Faibussowitsch]

Victor - Does this count the number of users who simply loaded the module? Or users who submitted a job using the petsc module (if that’s even tracked?). 

Barry -  w.r.t. your point about questionnaires not being overly useful what about asking users to send automated diagnostic reports if petsc has been successfully built on their machines? So you finish configure and make all and reach the make check prompt and get a message about a one-time system report sent:

...
=========================================
Now to check if the libraries are working do:
make PETSC_DIR=/Users/jacobfaibussowitsch/NoSync/petsc PETSC_ARCH=arch-darwin-c-debug check
=========================================
OPTIONAL: One-time request to send basic system capability information
to petsc developers. This is limited to OS type, gpu capability, {insert other data here}
and is used to improve CI/CD coverage, usage statistic and development
priorities. This message will not be shown again.

System info can be found under ${PETSC_DIR}/lib/petsc/conf/sysinfo.txt

Send system report to petsc developers do:
Make PETSC_DIR=/Users/jacobfaibussowitsch/NoSync/petsc PETSC_ARCH=arch-darwin-c-debug send
=========================================

This message could come up only once, and be blocked by the existence of some other file in the arch tree (or in $PETSC_DIR) irrespective of whether the user sends or not as soon as the message has been shown once.

In our overly tracked modern software environment I can definitely appreciate that users are rightfully distrustful of yet another data collection request, but if it is transparent and un-intrusive enough it may be palatable.

Best regards,

Jacob Faibussowitsch
(Jacob Fai - booss - oh - vitch)
Cell: (312) 694-3391

> On Sep 14, 2020, at 23:17, Victor Eijkhout <eijkhout at tacc.utexas.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On , 2020Sep14, at 19:33, Victor Eijkhout <eijkhout at tacc.utexas.edu <mailto:eijkhout at tacc.utexas.edu>> wrote:
>> 
>> I’ll see what I can find about Frontera but that’s going to be less.
> 
> 90 unique users.
> 
> V.

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