Re: Possible funding of gfortran work

[Andre Vehreschild <vehre@gmx.de>]

Hi Mikael,

please find my answers inline.

> > I understand. I would have been happy in the past when a client had as much
> > knowledge and structure than we already have. Under "Project goal" we now
> > have about 300 words. So we could add more.
> Well, It wouldn't be really part of the goal, more how to reach that
> goal.  The "timeframe" question is possibly where it should go.  Or if
> you consider that the planning is a goal itself, it could be put here.

The timeframe question accepts only a number. I.e. we can't plan there.

> > What do you have in mind?
> Something that breaks a big, risky thing to a set of smaller, manageable
> ones.  Something showing that the main problems (or some of them at
> least) have been identified and that we have a path to solve them one by
> one.
>
> > Like adding
> > more bullet points to each item in the form of:
> >    - rebase existing implementation to current master
> >    - identify missing requirements
> >    - add tests for missing requirements
> >    - implement missing requirements to pass tests.
> >    ...
> Well, this is a bit too general to be useful.

Mhh, I don't suppose that the planning will be evaluated by software
specialist. I therefore propose not to be too technical, but to stay on a
project manager level. So how about we enumerate the bullets so that we then
can put a project/milestone structure under each one like this (PD: person day):

1.M1 assess open issues and refine planning (1-3 PDs)
1.M2 rebase to current master and adapt to recent changes in gfortran (1-3 PDs)
1.M3 identify missing requirements ... I need input here from Nicolas as I
don't have an overview of what is needed. Therefore I am quite general.

>
> > Or are your targeting a more time based approach like:
> >    Milestone 1: shared mem coarrays merge to master in week 2 of project
> >    Milestone 2: finish research on general way for doing remote coarray
> > access in alien structures to finish in week 1 of project
> >    ...
> Maybe, but I would not emphasize the time constraints that much.

I understand. But for our own planning we need a rough estimate. Therefore
putting numbers to each milestone, will help a lot in planning.

> I have done it below for the scalarizer simplification, which is what
> for which the picture is the most clear in my mind regarding what to do
> and how to do it.
> Here it is, with the expected number of weeks (that's 3 days for me) to
> do it:
>   - Add optional scalarization block. (1 week)
>   - Setup multiple expression usage (in case of multiple loops) in a
> more clear way. (3 weeks)
>   - Move array and loop bounds setup to an opaque "start scalarization"
> function (3 weeks)
>   - Make scalarization independant on previous setup of array
> information and move setup code from "start scalarization" to "finish
> scalarization" (5 weeks)
>   - Initialize array information inside the gfc_conv_expr* functions and
> remove preliminary walking of expressions (4 weeks)
>
> I hope that's not too technical to be put in the application form.

:-) Removing technical speech is not the problem... But I like the plan
although I wouldn't know what to do in each case.

> > Mikael Morin @ ??? -- Maintained/Contributed to the scalarizer. Experienced
> > in gfortran development and component dependencies.
> >
> I'm not affiliated to any company, university or organization.  Just
> myself. :-)

Sorry, I did not mean any insult. What do you prefer? "not affiliated" or
"private", ...?

Regards,
	Andre

--
Andre Vehreschild * Email: vehre ad gmx dot de