-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
		       Major Changes Impacting Usability
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- None expected 
  (see the CHANGES file for a more extensive list of changes and new features)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                              Known Deficiencies
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- The sock and ssm channels are the only channels that implements dynamic 
  process support (i.e., MPI_COMM_SPAWN, MPI_COMM_CONNECT, MPI_COMM_ACCEPT, 
  etc.) under Unix.  All other channels will experience failures for tests 
  exercising dynamic process functionality.  Under Windows, the sock, ssm, 
  and sshm channels implement the dynamic process support.

- The ssm channel uses special interprocess locks (often assembly) that may 
  not work with some compilers or machine architectures. It works on
  Linux with gcc, Intel, and Pathscale compilers on various Intel
  architectures. It also works in Windows and Solaris environments.

- Support for the "external32" data representation is incomplete.  This affects
  the MPI_PACK_EXTERNAL and MPI_UNPACK_EXTERNAL routines, as well the external
  data representation capabilities of ROMIO.

- The CH3 device does not presently support heterogeneous communication.  That
  is to say that the processes involved in a job must use the same basic type
  sizes and format.  The sizes and format are typically determined by the
  processor architecture, although it may also be influenced by compiler
  options.  This device does support the use of different executables (e.g.,
  multiple-program-multiple-data, or MPMD, programming).

- The support for MPI_THREAD_SERIALIZED and MPI_THREAD_MULTIPLE is preliminary,
  and only available with the sock channel.  We encourage people to
  experiment and provide feedback.  

- MPI_IRECV operations that are not explicitly completed before MPI_FINALIZE is
  called may fail to complete before MPI_FINALIZE returns, and thus never
  complete.  Furthermore, any matching send operations may erroneously fail.
  By explicitly completed, we mean that the request associated with the
  operation is completed by one of the MPI_TEST or MPI_WAIT routines.

- C++ Binding:
  
  The MPI datatypes corresponding to Fortran datatypes are not available
  (e.g., no MPI::DOUBLE_PRECISION).

  The C++ binding does not implement a separate profiling interface, 
  as allowed by the MPI-2 Standard (Section 10.1.10 Profiling).  

  With the exception of the profiling interface, future releases of MPICH2 
  will address these limitations of the C++ binding.

- For passive target RMA, there is no asynchronous agent at the target
  that will cause progress to occur. Progress occurs only when the user
  calls an MPI function at the target (which could well be MPI_WIN_FREE).

- --enable-sharedlibs=gcc does not work on Solaris because of difference
  between the GNU ld program and the Solaris ld program

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
			Issues for Developers
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- MPE2, which is distributed as part of MPICH2, requires autoconf 2.52 or
  higher.  By default, MPICH2 and MPE use the autoconf programs in one's path.
  The environment variables AUTOCONF and AUTOHEADER can be set to specify
  alternative commands for MPICH2.  Likewise, MPE_AUTOCONF and MPE_AUTOHEADER
  can be set to specify alternative commands for MPE2.  Obviously, these
  environment variables must be set before running "maint/updatefiles" or
  "make dist".  In order to handle incompatibilities between different
  minor versions of autoconf, we've selected autoconf 2.59 as the version
  required for MPE2 and MPICH2.
