(j3.2006) (SC22WG5.3760) Ballot on the technical content of the TR

[Aleksandar Donev]

On Sunday 07 December 2008 18:46, Jim Xia wrote:

> 2.) Fortran descriptors
> Although Fortran descriptors are used when passing assumed-shape
> arrays, pointer arrays and allocatable arrays by many vendors, they
> are however not universally used by all vendors.
They are by all existing vendors that still sell compilers, especially 
those that intend to implement F2008 or any TRs or any new features 
what-so-ever. Besides, EVERY new feature ads implementation burdens, 
that is what they are for! We try to minimize the effort, but it cannot 
be made zero.

> Furthermore allowing
> updates on Fortran descriptors from C programs will likely cause
> safety issues and also be problematic in consistency check by some
> vendors.  This becomes a sure way to introduce bugs difficult to
> diagnose.
I do not understand this. You don't want a descriptor TR at all or not? 
You want something that is "safe"---can you propose such a design 
please? I find it impossible to imagine how C can pass things to 
Fortran by descriptor without being allowed to modify the descriptor??? 
Perhaps you have something else in mind, but the above does not make 
sense.

>  These features are of more urgent and important nature than the
> OPTIONAL or the descriptor features in TR 29113. 
OK, I agree.
> Therefore it is 
> more desirable to devote effort and study to these features in a
> separate TR.
The sure way to DELAY them would be to restart the process yet once 
again. When will we learn that revisiting past decisions 100+ times is 
a waste of time?!?

Best,
Aleks

-- 
Aleksandar Donev, Ph.D.
Lawrence Postdoctoral Fellow @ Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
High Performance Computational Materials Science and Chemistry
E-mail: donev1 at llnl.gov
Phone: (925) 424-6816  Fax: (925) 423-0785
Address: P.O.Box 808, L-367, Livermore, CA 94551-9900
Web: http://cherrypit.princeton.edu/donev