"Kong, Fande" <fande.k...@inl.gov> writes: > On Thu, Jun 28, 2018 at 3:03 PM, Jed Brown <j...@jedbrown.org> wrote: > >> "Kong, Fande" <fande.k...@inl.gov> writes: >> >> > There is also a question about making -help useful. We would like >> these >> > >> >> sort of diagnostic options to be provided in -help exactly once in on >> >> organized way. The normal way to do that is to put it in the >> >> *SetFromOptions. >> >> >> > >> > Like this one. It is even better if we have an option to dump all petsc >> > options. >> >> What do you mean? Like before execution? That dump would not be >> finite. >> > > Yes, before execution. For example, if I say "-help snes", and then all > snes related options should be printed out. Of course, we do not need to > add prefix to these options. > > It may be impossible with the current PETSc design.
The number of such options is not finite because we can -npc_snes_type and spawn a new level of SNES options. Would we print a grammar? Would -help pc print all the (top-level only, even for composite and multilevel?) options for all the PC types? I don't know how to make the user interface work outside of an interactive configuration tool that had the ability to keep re-configuring a (trivial sized) solver.