Lessons learned from integrating scientific libraries within a plugin architecture

Designing interoperable software is critical to boosting scientific productivity in many research applications, especially when exposed through flexible interfaces such as a plugin or component based framework. Such scalable applications with complex dependency chains, often require rigorous source configuration, continuous testing and flexible deployment processes that cover a wide range of platforms (Linux/OSX/Windows) and environment variations. We will discuss hurdles in achieving interoperability using lessons learned from developing a serial/parallel MOAB database plugin for VisIt. The development of this plugin has led us to question some library design choices, and emphasized the need for creating better processes (versioning and build configuration) that are resilient to software interface and lifecycle changes. Taking the lessons learned from this new VisIt plugin, we present best practices and guidelines that are more broadly applicable to scientific software development in CSE applications.

Poster presented at SIAM CSE17 PP108 Minisymposterium: Software Productivity and Sustainability for CSE and Data Science.