[gmx-developers] future of installed headers and libraries

[Roland Schulz]

On Mon, Jul 7, 2014 at 3:35 AM, Mark Abraham <mark.j.abraham at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
>      We already have some of our I/O functionality available as separate
>>> libraries. If we make our custom analysis functionality available, I'd much
>>> rather do that as a Python extension, or as a contribution to a dedicated
>>> MD-analysis project. mdrun... might never achieve a better "API" than
>>> grompp.
>>>
>>
>>  I think a Python API for the analysis library would be great. But I
>> think the way we should do it, is wrap the API we have. Thus I don't think
>> a Python extension is a reason against a C/C++ API but a reason for it.
>>
>
>  Sure, but the "API" we have seems like it is just a collection of
> everything that existed at some point. I'm not against having a public,
> stable API, but I am against preserving the existing "API" if it delivers
> little value internally or externally, and is an impediment to building
> software that might later be able to get an API worth having.
>

I wouldn't mind removing some of the legacy stuff from the public API. In
fact I did that in the past myself (e.g. removing the tmpi header from
behing installed). And of course it isn't a real API. But I'm not sure how
much work we would safe by removing it. Especially if it is clear to
everyone that the legacy API isn't meant to be stable. The changes
currently in gerrit (e.g. 3768, 3762, 3750) are about the new API. Thus
unless you would also remove the new API (which I think would be a bad
idea) you wouldn't safe that work.

Roland

-- 
ORNL/UT Center for Molecular Biophysics cmb.ornl.gov
865-241-1537, ORNL PO BOX 2008 MS6309
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