Re: [mpi-21] Call for MPI 2.2 and 3.0 agenda items for the Jan mee ting

[Douglas Gregor <dgregor@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Dec 2, 2007, at 8:43 AM, Jeff Squyres wrote:

> On Dec 1, 2007, at 8:25 PM, William Yu wrote:
>
> > On the boost front, I liked how they implemented their MPI  
> > interface that takes advantage of C++ language constructs over and  
> > above a simple overlay or wrapper.
> >
> > However, boost's implementation is boost specific right? I can't  
> > compile the same code to another library because it is not  
> > standardized. Fortunately, boost is open source.
>
> Boost is a standalone system that (as I understand it) works on top  
> of most/any underlying MPI implementation/s.

Yes, it's standalone and builds on top of the C MPI bindings, so it  
should work with any MPI 1.1-compliant implementation.

> It is not a standard; I do not believe that it was designed to be  
> interoperable with anything.

I'm not sure what "interoperable" means. It interoperates with C and  
Fortran for anything that is described with an MPI datatype (either  
primitive or derived); for types that require serialization (linked  
lists and such), the Boost implementation does its own thing. It  
would be relatively simple to update the interface to eliminate the  
explicit dependencies on Boost (there are few of these), but all this  
is only relevant if the committee is interested in reconsidering the  
official C++ bindings to MPI.

	- Doug