We got essentially the same feedback from the OMPI developer community that the tools working group gave: how would a tool find the state pvar to associate the other pvar array slots?
The answer we're currently using is what we discussed on the tools call: <prefix> is a state variable with enumeration, and all <prefix><name> pvars are expected to use the mapping of that state variable. For exmple, btl_usnic_num_sends will follow the pattern established by the btl_usnic pvar state variable.
Any other ideas for a convention?
I guess the problem with this (and maybe I'm missing something) is that it will be hard for a tool to know if a particular state variable with an enumeration describes other variables that have the prefix in their names. In other words, how do I know that this state variable is special and not just that some pvars happen to have the same prefix, but there's no relationship between them?
Maybe we could have another variable type? I know you guys are trying to get a release out the door and it doesn't help that we don't have more concrete ideas on this yet.
Everybody: Please do your homework and try to think of more use cases for this so we come up with a good generic solution.