Tracker

[llaniewski]

During some talk at UQ, a tracker was proposed, which would log usage of the code. Generally the idea is to send simple REST (http) requests logging in the usage of the code for the developers to have an general idea of the usage of the code. The information could potentially include:

• domain (for identification of universities etc)
• CPU/GPU information
• Total mesh size
• Total number of iterations
• commit hash
• model
• average MLBups A notice could be displayed in ./configure script and it could be deactivated on the level of ./configure --without-tracker or something similar.

It's a proposal for now. But I'm strongly considering it.

Practical implementation would need an efficient host receiving the information. The information would have to be send both at the beginning of the simulation and at end. I could be done in a wrapper script proposed in #214 or as part of the main executable.

[mdzik]

There are legal issues with that. Do we have any info about how many copies of the code are used beside people we know? Some statistics could be implemented, and I might be able to provide resources if needed, those does not to be were large IMHO, less than average WWW server ;) . Keep in mind that enterprise clusters might be off-internet or behind firewall/proxy.

[llaniewski]

So. I dug a bit, and for most of REST API enabled databases, one needs to have a token to post information. This means that either a token would be distributed with the software (don't think it's a good idea) or obtained by the user. The second option is kind of counterproductive if it would not be very easy for the user.

With our own server, there are issues of stability and long-term maintenance.