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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Hi,<br>
<br>
While I agree we have a maintenance issue, this strategy will lead
to all features the current developers don't use/don't care about
to disappear at a high rate. There might be (or might not be)
significant numbers of users in the world using such features. The
question is what happens then. Will people abandon GROMACS? Keep
using an old version? Or complain that some feature is not there?
If they complain, will something happen? I suspect most people
don't have the coding skills and GROMACS knowledge to contribute.
Not that I see another good solution though.<br>
This is a point we should bring up at the telcon today.<br>
<br>
PS I do care about tabulated bondeds and a had looked at your
change more than once, but have not had the time yet to do a
thorough enough review for a +2.<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
<br>
Berk<br>
<br>
On 01/06/16 12:06 , Mark Abraham wrote:<br>
</div>
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cite="mid:CAMNuMASBG6Wqeku00=30FGt0vm1m4E3_F+voCHgwD=coKKyMKg@mail.gmail.com"
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<div dir="ltr">Hi,
<div><br>
</div>
<div>While working on table support for the Verlet scheme a few
months ago (particularly, putting the tables into the .tpr for
better user experience), I added some tests for tabulated
bonded interactions and discovered that these have been broken
in release-5-1, after we changed some command-line handling
for improved robustness elsewhere. That's because for a long
time the table filenames have been inferred by mdrun in a
hacky way.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>So I've fixed them, and after two months Teemu found time
to look at the straightforward fix + tests. After a further
month, nobody else has had time to look. Meanwhile, it isn't
worth me continuing development to support such a feature
until I see that somebody cares about it.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>We cannot continue like this. If the software is too
large/broken/untested for people to maintain, them we must
make it smaller. <span style="line-height:1.5">And if we apply
it to tabulated bondeds, then it will also apply immediately
to lots of the other things that people say are nice to have
if someone else will do the work to fix the known problems.
Even when someone has</span><span style="line-height:1.5"> volunteered
to support the feature, if nobody will volunteer to review
their maintenance patches, then the feature cannot remain in
the code.</span></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>After we release 2016, I will make a checklist of mdrun
features, platforms, analysis tools, and solicit volunteers to
a) maintain them, and b) review related code changes. If stuff
doesn't have volunteers by September 1, then I will remove it
forthwith. That goes for the group scheme and old-style
analysis tools, too! In future, if the volunteers for a
feature aren't able to help in practice, e.g. they say nothing
at all for a month after a problem surfaces or a patch needs
review, then they'll be removed from volunteer status, and if
there's no replacement around, the feature goes.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Your not-feeling-benevolent-today dictator,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Mark</div>
</div>
<br>
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