[gmx-developers] Hidden modules in gmx?

[David van der Spoel]

On 2013-09-22 23:04, Erik Lindahl wrote:
> Hi Massimo,
>
> We haven't decided anything yet, but the ideal solution (again, IMHO) would be to have a contrib-module that could be downloaded or enabled at compile time, and then you would get a number of extensions that are less tested.
>
> The problem is that while some users realize they need to check their results carefully, other's won't, and then they sometimes end up giving Gromacs a bad reputation for being "buggy", just because they were able to use some esoteric  feature. I don't really have any strong preference how things are set apart, but it is important that we discriminate better between code that _has_ been extensively tested and some random contributed function that might - or might not - work.
>
> At the end of the day,"tested code" comes down to volunteers who are willing to check that it works!
>
Another (prettier) way rather than hiding the tools would be to 
introduce an extra level in gmx, e.g.

gmx contrib help
gmx contrib funky_analysis help

gmx fftools help
gmx fftools convert_amber_to_gromacs

Thoughts?

> Cheers,
>
> Erik
>
>
> On Sep 22, 2013, at 10:59 PM, ms <devicerandom at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 22/09/13 22:30, Erik Lindahl wrote:
>>>
>>> As we've discussed at a couple of occasions, many of the analysis
>>> tools have way too many options that have only been tested in 1-2
>>> special cases by the author, and when people test these on other
>>> systems it frequently breaks. I would like to revert back to a case
>>> where everything we present to users has been tested extensively, and
>>> in a huge number of combinations.  Any code that has only been tested
>>> in a special case does not belong in the public distribution, IMHO.
>>
>> I am a gmx user (joined this ML because I needed to patch gmx long time ago for a project, still lurking), and please don't do that. Warning extensively that it is beta/poorly tested code is essential, sure. Removing it altogether is not so nice. It *might* work anyway, and even if it doesn't, people may still be able to patch it, by using it, noticing the break and remedy by themselves - and bringing the patch to devs.
>>
>> Am I being naive?
>>
>> thanks,
>> Massimo
>>
>>
>> --
>> Massimo Sandal, Ph.D.
>> http://devicerandom.org
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-- 
David van der Spoel, Ph.D., Professor of Biology
Dept. of Cell & Molec. Biol., Uppsala University.
Box 596, 75124 Uppsala, Sweden. Phone:	+46184714205.
spoel at xray.bmc.uu.se    http://folding.bmc.uu.se