[petsc-dev] PetscUse/TryMethod

Satish Balay balay at mcs.anl.gov
Sun Apr 3 13:02:41 CDT 2022 

Perhaps there are already some political decisions made. Since PETSc is part of xsdk - we are to commited to contirbute to it.

But then when evaluating MRs - its hard to rememer how to enforce some of these commitments. [so for improving CI is the primary suggestion - and only at the xsdk level]


Also my comments so far are from xsdk point of view - and this thread started off from the burden petsc changes impose on regular users [and packages]  - so those issues
can't easily be addressed in any 'enforced DOE  political decision'

Satish

On Sun, 3 Apr 2022, Barry Smith wrote:

> 
>   I think this requires the political decision to be made on the order of the finalization and rules to enforce the order and timings. In a distributed DOE world this kind of political decision is tough. 
> 
>    I think a system more like just-in-time-packaging has to emerge to give more flexibility for the free-wheeling open source work. I have no idea how one could achieve this. Some kind of "smart" versioning that doe not require one to explicitly manage a bunch of "if package version is x do y else if version is z do w."
> 
> 
> 
> > On Apr 3, 2022, at 1:29 PM, Satish Balay <balay at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
> > 
> > there is certainly frustration with changes.
> > 
> > And then there could be real issues. If similar major changes land in sept release [at the last minite] in any critical packages [that others packages don't quickly add it to their own sept release ] - that might break things in a way that xsdk release could not be delivered.
> > 
> > [and usually triggers hard to resolve discussion of who should address this failure - that changed package - or dependent packages. And even if patches are available - they might not get in - due to workflow isues and such].
> > 
> > Satish
> > 
> > On Sun, 3 Apr 2022, Barry Smith wrote:
> > 
> >> 
> >>  We have not updated Sundials because they developed an entirely new code with new APIs, it is essentially a new package with tons of new functionality. Had they been incrementally changing things over the years we would have actually kept up with it; so this is not a good example of how small API changes keep us from upgrading, not at all. It is just an example of how it takes a lot of work to wrap a new large package like Sundials 3 from scratch and someone must make a big effort to do it. Note: I think Sundials was right to do a rewrite, their classic design was preventing them from making dramatic additions to the old code by doing a complete rewrite they could accomplish so much more.
> >> 
> >>  MOAB has not been updated presumably because there are no or very unaggressive users.
> >> 
> >>  Side note: I understand the frustration and grumbling that takes place when one has to deal with change, especially when from a perspective as an outer-sider to a project the change may seem unnecessary, that frustration and grumbling is normal, I do it all the time. But it should not dictate policy.
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >>> On Apr 3, 2022, at 12:58 PM, Satish Balay <balay at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
> >>> 
> >>> On Sun, 3 Apr 2022, Barry Smith wrote:
> >>> 
> >>>> 
> >>>> 
> >>>>> On Apr 3, 2022, at 12:24 PM, Satish Balay <balay at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
> >>>>> 
> >>>>>> If we had this attitude with the external packages PETSc uses we would have to stop using most of the packages/*.py. 
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> Sure one can take extreme view on both sides. [no change, vs won't hesitate to change] - having a manageable (minimal) change is harder to do.
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> I would point out that most externalpackages don't change much and we benefit from it - hence we are able to support so may. Some packages had major changes - and we haven't upgraded to their new versions.
> >>>> 
> >>>> What packages are these?  We should have a tool that runs through all the packages/xxx.py and determines the date of release of the version we are using and if there are any newer versions available. We could run this tool automatically a month before each PETSc release sending its output to petsc-dev to see what we should be updating. 
> >>> 
> >>> sundials, moab [,trilinos - ml was only recently updated] - that I can think off right now.
> >>> 
> >>> Satish
> >>> 
> >>>> 
> >>>> Note also that some packages we don't update to, not because of API changes but because the new releases are broken in some way, this is life in the HPC world.
> >>>> 
> >>>> 
> >>>> 
> >>>> 
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> [i.e with the current state one can use them only if they completely buy into petsc ecosystem i.e use old version - but not any larger one - as in use newer features from them]
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> We did update to newer interfaces in some packages.
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> But these problems remain - and have to be dealt with - and sometimes the complexity increases based on the dependency tree.
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> [and also results in folk using and requiring help with older  petsc versions]
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> Satish
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> On Sun, 3 Apr 2022, Barry Smith wrote:
> >>>>> 
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>> I would say it is not reasonable for the package developers in the xsdk ecosystem to expect that they can just continue to use another HPC package for multiple years without doing some minimal amount of work to keep up with the other packages' new releases. If we had this attitude with the external packages PETSc uses we would have to stop using most of the packages/*.py. Yes, it is a constant race to keep up the versions in packages/*.py and requires some effort but if you want to play in this game that is a race you have to remain in. And it goes way beyond HPC, to say you do software development but don't need to manage constant change in everything is an oxymoron. There was never a golden age of computing where things didn't change rapidly, pretending there was or can be is not productive. Of course, we want to minimize public change, but having a goal of no public change is not a realistic or even desirable goal.
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> Just noticed - CHKERRQ() got removed from fortran interface - breaking pflotran
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>> This was just a oversight, easily fixed. 
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> On Apr 3, 2022, at 11:13 AM, Satish Balay <balay at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> Note this  is not just 'users should update their code' issue.
> >>>>>>> - all packages (that use petsc) would need to do this update
> >>>>>>> - and this update doesn't always happen - so pakages will stay at old release - some might not
> >>>>>>> - so now we cant build PETSc with both these packages together.
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> this type of change causes major issues in xsdk ecosystem (depends on how many direct/indirect dependencies are on the given package)
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> Just noticed - CHKERRQ() got removed from fortran interface - breaking pflotran
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> https://gitlab.com/xsdk-project/spack-xsdk/-/jobs/2285145624
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> [also CHKERRABORT]. Perhaps they can be added back in.
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> $ git diff release-3.16..release include/petsc/finclude/petscsys.h
> >>>>>>> diff --git a/include/petsc/finclude/petscsys.h b/include/petsc/finclude/petscsys.h
> >>>>>>> <snip>
> >>>>>>> #define SETERRABORT(c,ierr,s)  call PetscError(c,ierr,0,s); call MPI_Abort(c,ierr)
> >>>>>>> -#define CHKERRQ(ierr) if (ierr .ne. 0) then;call PetscErrorF(ierr);return;endif
> >>>>>>> +#define PetscCall(ierr) if (ierr .ne. 0) then;call PetscErrorF(ierr);return;endif
> >>>>>>> #define CHKERRA(ierr) if (ierr .ne. 0) then;call PetscErrorF(ierr);call MPIU_Abort(PETSC_COMM_SELF,ierr);endif
> >>>>>>> -#define CHKERRABORT(c,ierr) if (ierr .ne. 0) then;call PetscErrorF(ierr);call MPI_Abort(c,ierr);endif
> >>>>>>> +#define PetscCallAbort(c,ierr) if (ierr .ne. 0) then;call PetscErrorF(ierr);call MPI_Abort(c,ierr);endif
> >>>>>>> #define CHKMEMQ call chkmemfortran(__LINE__,__FILE__,ierr)
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> Satish
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> On Sun, 3 Apr 2022, Barry Smith wrote:
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>> To use the latest version of PETSc, each user needs to remove the error checks on these calls. The resulting code will work with previous versions of PETSc as well as the current version of PETSc.  PETSc has never promised complete backward compatibility in the sense of promising that one can use new PETSc releases without any changes to their code; the documentation has always stated new releases will contain changes in the API. We began using depreciate a few years ago to limit the number of changes that needed to be made immediately for each release but depreciate is not suitable for all changes and so users do need to make some changes for each new release. 
> >>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>>> On Apr 3, 2022, at 7:23 AM, Lisandro Dalcin <dalcinl at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>>> The recent PetscUse/TryMethod changes are backward incompatible. Third-party codes cannot compile without modification. Our users deserve better.
> >>>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>>> -- 
> >>>>>>>>> Lisandro Dalcin
> >>>>>>>>> ============
> >>>>>>>>> Senior Research Scientist
> >>>>>>>>> Extreme Computing Research Center (ECRC)
> >>>>>>>>> King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
> >>>>>>>>> http://ecrc.kaust.edu.sa/ <http://ecrc.kaust.edu.sa/>
> >>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>>> 
> >>>>>>> 
> >>>>>> 
> >>>>> 
> >>>> 
> >>> 
> >> 
> > 
>

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