There is a clear requirement for the user code to be able to control the profiler dynamically at run time. This is normally used for (at least) the purposes of
MPI_PCONTROL(level, ...)
[ IN level] Profiling level
int MPI_Pcontrol(const int level, ...)
MPI_PCONTROL(level)
INTEGER LEVEL, ...
MPI libraries themselves make no use of this routine, and simply return immediately to the user code. However the presence of calls to this routine allows a profiling package to be explicitly called by the user.
Since MPI has no control of the implementation of the profiling code, we are unable to specify precisely the semantics which will be provided by calls to MPI_PCONTROL. This vagueness extends to the number of arguments to the function, and their datatypes.
However to provide some level of portability of user codes to different profiling libraries, we request the following meanings for certain values of level.
The provision of MPI_PCONTROL as a no-op in the standard MPI library allows them to modify their source code to obtain more detailed profiling information, but still be able to link exactly the same code against the standard MPI library.