[vtk-developers] vtkMPIController::Initialize() and wrapped languages

[Shead, Timothy]

Gang:

As it's coded today, vtkMPIController::Initialize() (the no-argument version) assumes that MPI_Init() has been called elsewhere; this means for example that vtkMPIController.Initialize() can only be called from the pvtkpython executable - it won't work when called from a vanilla python interpreter.  This seems needlessly limiting, and greatly reduces the utility of VTK's multi-processing abstraction.  I propose adding an "int initializedExternally" parameter to vtkMPIController::Initialize(), and defaulting it to "true".  This would provide backwards-compatible behavior, allow VTK+MPI use with vanilla interpreters, eliminate the need for the pvtkpython executable, and would be consistent with the 3-argument form of vtkMPIController::Initialize().

Any thoughts?

Cheers,
Tim

Timothy M. Shead
Sandia National Laboratories
1461, Scalable Analysis and Visualization