From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 16898 invoked by alias); 19 Feb 2010 00:20:50 -0000 Received: (qmail 16885 invoked by uid 22791); 19 Feb 2010 00:20:50 -0000 X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-10.2 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_HI,SPF_PASS X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from proofpoint2.lanl.gov (HELO proofpoint2.lanl.gov) (204.121.3.26) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.43rc1) with ESMTP; Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:20:45 +0000 Received: from mailrelay1.lanl.gov (mailrelay1.lanl.gov [128.165.4.101]) by proofpoint2.lanl.gov (8.14.3/8.14.3) with ESMTP id o1J0KhR2005074 for ; Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:20:43 -0700 Received: from alvie-mail.lanl.gov (alvie-mail.lanl.gov [128.165.4.110]) by mailrelay1.lanl.gov (Postfix) with ESMTP id 397232410E9 for ; Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:20:43 -0700 (MST) Received: from localhost (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by alvie-mail.lanl.gov (Postfix) with ESMTP id 37FA27D0044 for ; Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:20:43 -0700 (MST) X-NIE-2-Virus-Scanner: amavisd-new at alvie-mail.lanl.gov Received: from [130.55.124.157] (manticore.lanl.gov [130.55.124.157]) by alvie-mail.lanl.gov (Postfix) with ESMTP id 289FF7D0042 for ; Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:20:43 -0700 (MST) Subject: Re: Feedback from GSL folks on libflame 4.0 From: Gerard Jungman To: gsl-discuss mailing list In-Reply-To: <4a00655d1002181150j3975f69bk29084d5b50eeb974@mail.gmail.com> References: <4a00655d1002171047t4e87fb85w88b609245e3f9a8e@mail.gmail.com> <4B7D90B5.4020707@cs.utexas.edu> <4a00655d1002181150j3975f69bk29084d5b50eeb974@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:20:00 -0000 Message-Id: <1266538880.27033.100.camel@manticore.lanl.gov> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Proofpoint-Virus-Version: vendor=fsecure engine=1.12.8161:2.4.5,1.2.40,4.0.166 definitions=2010-02-18_14:2010-02-06,2010-02-18,2010-02-18 signatures=0 Mailing-List: contact gsl-discuss-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gsl-discuss-owner@sourceware.org X-SW-Source: 2010-q1/txt/msg00029.txt.bz2 On Thu, 2010-02-18 at 13:50 -0600, Rhys Ulerich wrote: > I'm willing to take a stab at providing the necessary error handling > underneath flame to make it play nice with GSL's error handling model. > The obvious choice is to adopt GSL's routines. However, flame is > LGPL and so adopting GSL's GPLed error handling directly is not an > option. > > Do you know of an LGPL project that you believe does a good job in this regard? I don't know of another project, but I haven't looked very hard (and certainly not in a long time). Anyway, I think that copying the GSL stuff (if you really want to) only requires asking us. Brian probably has the copyright for the error-handling stuff and can just re-license and gift that part of the code (unless he has some objection or I am missing something). In my follow-on comments to Field, I suggested the two-prototype model used by (at least parts of) GSL, where each function has both a "natural" abort-on-trouble version and a "return-code" version. The "natural" version defers to the "return-code" version in the obvious way. I am happy enough with this part of GSL, anyway. Anything more complicated should probably be discussed critically. I don't think I'm totally happy with every aspect of GSL error-handling, mainly because I don't think it was implemented consistently across the whole library. The work required is obviously very easy, just a bit tedious. Eventually the "natural" versions could be automatically generated, if that seems worth doing. A catalog of return codes and associated static error messages is needed. That might require eye-balling the libflame source, possibly doing some classification work, depending on how organized they were about their error conditions. If you can think of something better, that would be great too. Any ideas for improvement are welcome. -- G. Jungman