On Sep 18, 2008, at 2:02 PM, Bill Long wrote:
Let's also acknowledge that a significant "artificial constraint" is backwards compatibility for existing applications. We can't just change all the C bindings to make the millions of lines of MPI code out there no longer be compilable.
I agree that backward compatibility is a good thing. However, are not the C bindings insulated from this? If the new interface specifies intptr_t for the count argument, and the existing program supplies an int (conforming to the old standard) the argument will be automatically promoted in the caller. I guess I don't see a problem there.
I am happy to talk about backward compatibility and why it can be a problem in the context of the larger MPI Forum discussion about this issue. -- Jeff Squyres Cisco Systems