[Mpi-forum] Errata handling

Wed Dec 5 16:11:09 CST 2012

Errata do not, by definition, require a new printing
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erratum].

I cannot recount the proper citation, but I believe that it has been
stated that the printed standard is not official.

I totally love the book and when errata are approved, I will print
them, fold them in half and put them inside of the jacket of the book,
which is _exactly_ what is meant by errata.

The approval of errata should not in any way invalidate your (Rolf's)
printing effort and people should not view them as mutually exclusive
concepts.

Best,

Jeff

On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 2:04 PM, Rolf Rabenseifner <rabenseifner at hlrs.de> wrote:
> Additionally, I must say that an MPI-3.0.1 would be directly
> against the final result of the discussion from last meeting.
> We said that a standard must have a meaningful stability
> of at least two years.
> I do not want to reopen this discussion, but based on exactly
> this result, our center decided to take the risk to print
> the MPI-3.0 and to sell it at costs as a service for the
> whole MPI community.
> We had to print all books for the next two years and to pay them.
> Print-on-demand has shown that it does not work with 852
> pages in hardcover.
>
> An MPI-3.0.1 would completely kill this service combined with
> a significant loss.
> Result: Errata should never touch the numbering of our standard.
>
> I hope that the whole Forum supports our print service
> and does not continue with this errata numbering discussion.
>
> Best regards
> Rolf
>
> Sorry Tony,
>
> but in the past we did errata without incrementing anything,
> and it worked.
> Errata change the original document because there is a bug
> that must be fixed. Only this bug is fixed.
> Errata never change the title page of a document,
> and MPI-3.0 from Sep 21, 2012 is part of the title page
> and this is not a bug, therefore not changed by errata.
>
> If an implementor did not detect an inconsistency and
> implemented something that is wrong, then it is a bug in his
> software and it needs to be fixed, latest when the
> errata is voted in, better when the inconsistency is
> reolved by the chapter committee and published in a ticket.
> The software is always MPI-3.0 compliant, but with some bugs.
>
> Please keep it simple!
>
> Best regards
> Rolf
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Anthony Skjellum" <tony at cis.uab.edu>
>> To: "Main MPI Forum mailing list" <mpi-forum at lists.mpi-forum.org>
>> Sent: Wednesday, December 5, 2012 6:42:07 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Mpi-forum] Errata handling
>> We need to increment the third digit of the standard each time errata
>> are accepted in this way.
>> "3.0 + errata compliant" is too vague.
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Rolf Rabenseifner" <rabenseifner at hlrs.de>
>> To: "Main MPI Forum mailing list" <mpi-forum at lists.mpi-forum.org>
>> Sent: Wednesday, December 5, 2012 11:23:56 AM
>> Subject: [Mpi-forum] Errata handling
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I detected that there seems to be a discussion.
>> >From my viewpoint based on experience since MPI-2.0,
>> the processing should be very simple and clear:
>>
>> - only important errata are published, not the typos.
>> - important is that the interface was definitely inconsistent
>> or obviously wrong.
>> - enough review by committee members, i.e., it is clear that
>> the correction is correct.
>> - real reading in the forum, because it is about the interface.
>> - single reading + vote for corrections of inconsistencies.
>>
>> Errata should pass always in the next meeting after they
>> were detected.
>>
>> Errata are voted and "3.0 compiant" always means 3.0+errata compliant.
>> Errata are for obvious bugs and inconsistencies.
>>
>> Reason:
>> - Being compliant to a bug is stupied and must be corrected
>> as soon as detected.
>> (Example: It was never intented that you are MPI-2.2 compliant
>> when having BOOL with 4 bytes in the external32 datarep.)
>> - Being compliant to an inconsistency is impossible,
>> because MPI-3.0 says A and not-A;
>> you can never be compliant to both A and not-A.
>>
>> There should be only ONE errata document, which is
>> updated after each meeting if new errata are added.
>> The errata should be sorted by page and linenumbers in MPI-3.0.
>>
>> By this, there are older versions (visible at the date)
>> of the errata document, but only the newest is binding.
>>
>> If we want to have the history in, we can add for each
>> erratum the following parantheses:
>>
>> "(detected in ticket #nnn on May 1, 2099, voted in on Jun 16, 2099)".
>>
>> Because we always should try to circulate errata in a ticket,
>> all implementors have early access to the information.
>> It should be voted in in the same meeting as it was read.
>> That's enough. This should need 30-60 minutes in a forum meeting.
>> That's fast compared to a lot of emailing or email-voting.
>>
>> That's the way we did it in the past for all corrections
>> in the voted Fortran interface - and it worked.
>>
>> My strong recommendation:
>> - Do it simple and effective!
>> - And start it now!
>> - Use the meeting time for content of the MPI standard
>> and not for complicating the errata process.
>>
>> Best regards
>> Rolf
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Rolf Rabenseifner . . . . . . . . . .. email rabenseifner at hlrs.de
>> High Performance Computing Center (HLRS) . phone ++49(0)711/685-65530
>> University of Stuttgart . . . . . . . . .. fax ++49(0)711 / 685-65832
>> Head of Dpmt Parallel Computing . . . www.hlrs.de/people/rabenseifner
>> Nobelstr. 19, D-70550 Stuttgart, Germany . (Office: Room 1.307)
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>
> --
> Dr. Rolf Rabenseifner . . . . . . . . . .. email rabenseifner at hlrs.de
> High Performance Computing Center (HLRS) . phone ++49(0)711/685-65530
> University of Stuttgart . . . . . . . . .. fax ++49(0)711 / 685-65832
> Head of Dpmt Parallel Computing . . . www.hlrs.de/people/rabenseifner
> Nobelstr. 19, D-70550 Stuttgart, Germany . (Office: Room 1.307)
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-- 
Jeff Hammond
Argonne Leadership Computing Facility
University of Chicago Computation Institute
jhammond at alcf.anl.gov / (630) 252-5381
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffhammond
https://wiki.alcf.anl.gov/parts/index.php/User:Jhammond