Re: [boost] [Review][MPI] Boost.MPI review begins

From: John Fletcher (J.P.Fletcher_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-09-12 07:07:51

Jeremy Graham Siek wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> 
> Review questions
> ================
> 
> Please always explicitly state in your review, whether you think the
> library should be accepted into Boost.

YES please accept into Boost.

> 
> You might want to comment on the following questions:
> 
> - What is your evaluation of the design?

I have not dug into the design and these comments come from running some 
tests.  I very much like the integration of boost serialization, which 
in particular makes it easy to transfer strings between tasks of 
different rank.

> - What is your evaluation of the implementation?

The implementation has made extensive use of other boost components. As 
well as serialize, parts of archive and detail are used, I think as a 
consequence of the use of serialize. This came to light as my base 
installation is boost 1.33.1 and I installed only the required 
components from cvs.

> - What is your evaluation of the documentation?

I found this fairly easy to follow.

I think there is a typo in this line in the code on page 6.

world << "I am process " << world.rank() << " of " << world.size()
<< "." << std::endl;

The example did not compile as there does not seem to be operator<< 
defined for the communicator.

> - What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library?

I think this is useful for those working in a multiprocessor environment 
using MPI.

> - Did you try to use the library? With what compiler?

I have used the code on a single processor system (AMD64) using 32 bit 
Linux (Fedora 4)
with g++ 4.0.2 and a base of boost 1.33.1. I used LAM MPI.

As commented above I used cvs to obtain uptodate copies of boost 
components: serialise, archive and detail and compiled only those source 
files which were needed.

>    Did you have any problems?

Only with the code typo above, once I had identified the need for the 
uptodate archive version.

> - How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A
>    quick reading? In-depth study?

I have spent a couple of evenings and have run most of the examples in 
the manual and examples. I very much liked the string-cat example which 
can be easily adapted to gather output from all the tasks.

> - Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain?

I have used mpich and OOMPI
(http://www.osl.iu.edu/research/oompi/)
which does something similar in a different way.  I have also 
experimented with bsfcpp
(http://f.loulergue.free.fr/research/bsfcpp/main.html)

John Fletcher