On Mon, 2009-07-06 at 23:09 -0400, John Phillips wrote: > Luis Vitorio Cargnini wrote: > > > > Your suggestion is a great and interesting idea. I only have the fear to > > get used to the Boost and could not get rid of Boost anymore, because > > one thing is sure the abstraction added by Boost is impressive, it turn > > the things much less painful like MPI to be implemented using C++, also > > the serialization inside Boost::MPI already made by Boost to use MPI is > > astonishing attractive, and of course the possibility to add new types > > like classes to be able to send objects through MPI_Send of Boost, this > > is certainly attractive, but again I do not want to get dependent of a > > library as I said, this is my major concern. > > . > > I'm having problems understanding your base argument here. It seems > to be that you are afraid that Boost.MPI will make your prototype > program so much better and easier to write that you won't want to remove > it. Wouldn't this be exactly the reason why keeping it would be good? > > I like and use Boost.MPI. I voted for inclusion during the review in > the Boost developer community. However, what you should do in your > program is use those tools that produce the right trade off between the > best performance, easiest to develop correctly, and most maintainable > program you can. If that means using Boost.MPI, then remember that > questions about it are answered at the Boost Users mailing list. If your > decision is that that does not include Boost.MPI then you will have some > other challenges to face but experience shows that you can still produce > a very high quality program. > > Choose as you see fit, just be sure to understand your own reasons. > (Whether any of the rest of us on this list understand them or not.)
I understand Luis' position completely. He wants an MPI program, not a program that's written in some other environment, no matter how attractive that may be. It's like the difference between writing a numerical program in standard-conforming Fortran and writing it in the latest flavour of the month interpreted language calling highly optimised libraries behind the scenes. IF boost is attached to MPI 3 (or whatever), AND it becomes part of the mainstream MPI implementations, THEN you can have the discussion again. Ciao Terry -- Dr. Terry Frankcombe Research School of Chemistry, Australian National University Ph: (+61) 0417 163 509 Skype: terry.frankcombe
