[gmx-users] making maxwarn a hidden option

[Justin A. Lemkul]

chris.neale at utoronto.ca wrote:
> Strongly disagreed. I use maxwarn all the time. If it was a hidden 
> option, how would I have ever known about it? Further, if it was a 
> hidden option, then developers would need to be very careful about 
> throwing warnings only in the most dire situations because the general 
> user would not know how to circumvent them. This is also not optimal.
> 
> There are many things that one is capable of doing with gromacs that are 
> incorrect (e.g. coupling ions to their own temperature coupling group). 
> But there is no need to make all of these things hidden options. As you 
> stated, there are lots of things in gromacs that really should not be 
> used unless one knows the exact consequences of doing so.
> 

I still think allowing users to blindly override a fatal error with a simple 
command line argument is potentially dangerous, but perhaps only to the person 
doing it.  I agree that -maxwarn can be advantageous, but in the rare cases 
where one might need to use it, that's what this list is for.  There is already 
a distinction between "notes" and "warnings," based upon severity.  Most 
problems with the input file are classified as "notes," I believe.

Perhaps there is a solution short of completely removing the option from view 
(although I'm still OK with that).  I have already updated the wiki with the 
following:

http://www.gromacs.org/Documentation/Errors#XXX_non-matching_atom_names

Please feel free to modify as you feel would be useful.

Maybe there should be some additional error information printed when this comes 
up, like an obvious message of "Please check the order of your topology relative 
to your coordinate file" in conjunction with what is already printed.  Or, 
perhaps more generically, if a fatal error is triggered, the user should be 
advised that the problem may be severe enough that -maxwarn should not be employed.

I agree that Gromacs shouldn't attempt to supplant the users' own sense of 
logic, but I don't feel like informative error messages (at the very least) seek 
to do this.

-Justin

> Chris.
> 
> -- original message --
> 
>>  I would be a fan of making -maxwarn a hidden option; it really should
>> not be used unless one knows the exact consequences of doing so.
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> 
> 

-- 
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Justin A. Lemkul
Ph.D. Candidate
ICTAS Doctoral Scholar
MILES-IGERT Trainee
Department of Biochemistry
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA
jalemkul[at]vt.edu | (540) 231-9080
http://www.bevanlab.biochem.vt.edu/Pages/Personal/justin

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