pmix
Should we deprecate PMIX_NUM_SLOTS
Overview
It appears that PMIX_NUM_SLOTS has alternate keys which are used to access this information. As recorded in the version 3.1 notes of the standard:
Clarify that PMIX_NUM_SLOTS is duplicative of (a) PMIX_UNIV_SIZE when used at the session level and (b) PMIX_MAX_PROCS when used at the job and application levels, but leave it in for backward compatibility
The descriptions also indicate:
Maximum number of processes that can simultaneously be executing in the specified realm. Note that this attribute is the equivalent to PMIX_MAX_PROCS - it is included in the PMIx Standard for historical reasons. Defaults to the job realm.
Motivation
I can't argue for a urgent reason to deprecate this, and I suspect that if we did it would remain in the standard for a long time. However, it is a maintenance issue on both the standard and implementation side, so I just wanted to make this issue to see what people think.
Discussion Items
If anyone feels this is worth deprecating then feel free to comment or create a PR. I'll leave this for a while and if it doesn't get any interest I'll come back and close it at some point.
We want to go ahead and phase this out.
Also need to review where the word 'slot' is used if it needs to be substituted for another word (e.g. proc) or defined properly.
