Yuck, I think a far better user API is that PetscOptionsInsertFile() be callable before PetscInitialize(). The problem is that people have shoveled so much post-PetscInitialize() code into PetscOptionsInsertFile() over the years that stripping it all out would be painful. Maybe get a simplier pre- 2005 version of the routine and strip out the post-PetscInitialize() material? Barry

On Apr 22, 2018, at 5:54 PM, Jed Brown <[email protected]> wrote:

For users that read their own configuration files and/or choose PetscOptionsInsertFile after PetscInitialize, we don't have a good way to avoid overwriting PETSC_OPTIONS or command-line options. The user could manually find argv and the environment variable, but that's a poor abstraction. Should PetscOptionsInsertFile learn how to behave so as to add new entries to the options database, but not supersede any that already exist?