On Dec 5 2013, Pavan Balaji wrote: I agree with you that your posting should be treated as an informative link, and not a proposal for action.

Agreed. I should also add one more item:

- Bug-fixes (or sorts): if we decide that our MAX_STRING_LENGTH is too short and want to increase it, that's going to be a pain in the neck with ABI compatibility. ...

That goes to the heart of the matter. If the MPI Forum wanted to assist platforms (i.e. architecture and operating system combinations) to standardise ABIs (and each one would be different), it would need a significant redesign in such areas. It wouldn't be difficult - it would just need a fair amount of effort and be a significant change to the user interface. Personally, I would prioritise a debugging mode, which would be a comparable amount of work (though less change to the interface). But that's by the way .... Regards, Nick Maclaren.