[ofiwg] selecting a fabric for a destination

[Reese Faucette (rfaucett)]

>  It's not enough to indicate
> what fabric or provider is the shortest distance to some destination.  That
> builds in assumptions about what protocol the app wants to use, what
> endpoint capabilities are of interest, etc. which is what fi_getinfo provides.

Sorry, I think my followup was unclear - That's why I redefined the problem to be explicitly and only answering the question "what is the shortest distance?" as opposed to answering the question "what is the best fabric to use?" by assuming  shortest distance means "best".  By explicitly providing the answer to "what is shortest distance?" , we allow the app to use whatever metrics it wants to select the "best" fabric for it to use, and distance becomes one of the metrics available to the app, among other metrics like link speed, etc.

I'm OK with trying fi_getinfo with hints to start, but the mapping to open domain is a pain - loop on strcmp()ing the fabric names to match with the fabric underlying an already open domain?  Is there a more direct way?

-r