Add code change policy for Trilinos commits that potentially change user results
Created by: maherou
@spdomin @mhoemmen @kddevin @jwillenbring
Discussions coming from issue #572 (closed) have led to a determination that Trilinos needs a policy and process for managing repository changes that can impact computational results. For example, in the case of #572 (closed), changes to the Chebyshev smoother in Ifpack2 changed the behavior of Nalu and caused a diff diagnostic to be raised. While the change actually improved the behavior of Ifpack2, there was no way to signal to Trilinos users that the change could cause different computational results.
We will add to the Trilinos policies in these ways (proposed, and adapt if needed):
- If a commit to the Trilinos repository may lead to changes in application output, e.g., different preconditioner, more or fewer iterations, etc., the GitHub Issue associated with the commit will be given a label Results Impacting.
- Then users who have observed changes in their results can see any issues that might be a source.