Considering deprecating ParFORM #625

We may need to deprecate ParFORM, as we are not currently aware of anyone using it actively. Built on MPI, ParFORM enables large-scale computations across distributed systems, utilizing the memory and disk space of multiple nodes. Meanwhile, a multithreaded alternative, TFORM, has been developed and used in many applications. However, the internal structures of TFORM and ParFORM are fundamentally different, making it difficult to maintain both efficiently. Additionally, running memory checks with Valgrind is particularly cumbersome (see #429). Given our limited human resources, maintaining ParFORM has become increasingly unmanageable.

Users running ParFORM will see a deprecation warning. To suppress the warning, use the -ignore-deprecation command line option or set the environment variable FORM_IGNORE_DEPRECATION=1.

This does not mean that support will be dropped immediately. However, support for new features and bug fixes may be delayed or not provided at all. If we receive no feedback from users, ParFORM will be removed from the codebase at some point. If you want this support to continue, please leave a comment on this issue.