[ofa-general] Re: [PATCH] Opensm: main exit codes

[Timothy A. Meier]

Hi Sasha,

Sasha Khapyorsky wrote:
> Hi Tim,
> 
> On 17:10 Tue 18 Nov     , Timothy A. Meier wrote:
>>   I thought it would be useful to define a set of exit codes for opensm.  A quick examination of main.c
>> showed a few different ways to terminate.  How about this patch?  Obviously this doesn't catch every
>> possible exit scenario, but its a start that can be built upon.
> 
> Personally I read 'exit(0)' faster than 'exit(OSM_EXIT_TYPE_NORMAL)',
> but maybe it is just me :).

Me too :^)  Not much confusion over a return code of 0.

The audience for this change wouldn't be the people writing the software, but admins, scripts, and tools that
start/stop/monitor opensm.  At least that is our use case.

> 
> Maybe error codes could be formalized, but I'm not sure that it would be
> beneficial without any practical uses (and clear requirements
> understanding). Finally we can found us in a middle of the total mess
> similar to how OSM_LOG_* is used today.
> 
> Sasha
>

So the uses/requirements would be to formalize how opensm handles the non-ideal termination condition,
for the purpose of providing quick, convenient, and consistent information for other system level tools
that are responsible for starting/stopping/monitoring/reporting opensm.

I can't think of any other reasons or needs.


-- 
Timothy A. Meier
Computer Scientist
ICCD/High Performance Computing
meier3 at llnl.gov