[Mpi-22] Ticket #46: Add const Keyword to the C bindings-implementation

[William Gropp]

Actually, MPI has taken the lead in a number of areas, including cross- 
language compatibility, to say nothing of the existence of MPI itself.

And MPI has taken great pains to be the *greatest* common  
denominator.  Const simply captures the previously required semantics  
of the interface in the syntax, and is consistent with the MPI spirit.

Bill
On Mar 13, 2009, at 2:17 PM, Jeff Squyres wrote:

> On Mar 13, 2009, at 9:40 AM, William Gropp wrote:
>
>> First, this is a chicken-and-egg problem; the low level
>> interfaces are unlikely to change to add const unless there is some
>> application that will take advantage of that (and internally, if  
>> their
>> semantics allows it and their compiler can support it, they'll just
>> cast to add the const).  So MPI should take the lead, particularly
>> since using const also provides information to the user.
>>
>
> This is a very scary statement to me.  MPI has not traditionally
> "taken the lead" on forcing issues with other interfaces (look where
> it has gotten us with Fortran...).  Indeed, MPI has taken great pains
> to be the lowest common denominator across a variety of language,
> platforms, and operating systems.
>
> -- 
> Jeff Squyres
> Cisco Systems
>
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William Gropp
Deputy Director for Research
Institute for Advanced Computing Applications and Technologies
Paul and Cynthia Saylor Professor of Computer Science
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign