- some paraview versions (eg, on windows) don't support float, only double.
This mostly affected the vtkSurfaceWriter.
The foamToVTK is also affected, but since it also supports the XML
output formats (vtp, vtu) these can be used instead.
- The additional output generated by #calc directives in the
controlDict or decomposeParDict causes issues for the RunFunctions
extraction of 'application' and 'numberOfSubdomains'.
Avoid by using -disableFunctionEntries, which also has the side-effect
of disabling '#include'.
- Since 'bool' and 'Switch' use the _identical_ input mechanism
(ie, both accept true/false, on/off, yes/no, none, 1/0), the main
reason to prefer one or the other is the output.
The output for Switch is as text (eg, "true"), whereas for bool
it is label (0 or 1). If the output is required for a dictionary,
Switch may be appropriate. If the output is not required, or is only
used for Pstream exchange, bool can be more appropriate.
- improves backward compatibility and more naming consistency.
Retain setMany(iter1, iter2) to avoid ambiguity with the
PackedList::set(index, value) method.
- disallow insert() of raw pointers, since a failed insertion
(ie, entry already existed) results in an unmanaged pointer.
Either insert using an autoPtr, or set() with raw pointers or autoPtr.
- IOobjectList::add() now takes an autoPtr instead of an object reference
- IOobjectList::remove() now returns an autoPtr instead of a raw pointer
Improvements to existing functionality
--------------------------------------
- MPI is initialised without thread support if it is not needed e.g. uncollated
- Use native c++11 threading; avoids problem with static destruction order.
- etc/cellModels now only read if needed.
- etc/controlDict can now be read from the environment variable FOAM_CONTROLDICT
- Uniform files (e.g. '0/uniform/time') are now read only once on the master only
(with the masterUncollated or collated file handlers)
- collated format writes to 'processorsNNN' instead of 'processors'. The file
format is unchanged.
- Thread buffer and file buffer size are no longer limited to 2Gb.
The global controlDict file contains parameters for file handling. Under some
circumstances, e.g. running in parallel on a system without NFS, the user may
need to set some parameters, e.g. fileHandler, before the global controlDict
file is read from file. To support this, OpenFOAM now allows the global
controlDict to be read as a string set to the FOAM_CONTROLDICT environment
variable.
The FOAM_CONTROLDICT environment variable can be set to the content the global
controlDict file, e.g. from a sh/bash shell:
export FOAM_CONTROLDICT=$(foamDictionary $FOAM_ETC/controlDict)
FOAM_CONTROLDICT can then be passed to mpirun using the -x option, e.g.:
mpirun -np 2 -x FOAM_CONTROLDICT simpleFoam -parallel
Note that while this avoids the need for NFS to read the OpenFOAM configuration
the executable still needs to load shared libraries which must either be copied
locally or available via NFS or equivalent.
New: Multiple IO ranks
----------------------
The masterUncollated and collated fileHandlers can now use multiple ranks for
writing e.g.:
mpirun -np 6 simpleFoam -parallel -ioRanks '(0 3)'
In this example ranks 0 ('processor0') and 3 ('processor3') now handle all the
I/O. Rank 0 handles 0,1,2 and rank 3 handles 3,4,5. The set of IO ranks should always
include 0 as first element and be sorted in increasing order.
The collated fileHandler uses the directory naming processorsNNN_XXX-YYY where
NNN is the total number of processors and XXX and YYY are first and last
processor in the rank, e.g. in above example the directories would be
processors6_0-2
processors6_3-5
and each of the collated files in these contains data of the local ranks
only. The same naming also applies when e.g. running decomposePar:
decomposePar -fileHandler collated -ioRanks '(0 3)'
New: Distributed data
---------------------
The individual root directories can be placed on different hosts with different
paths if necessary. In the current framework it is necessary to specify the
root per slave process but this has been simplified with the option of specifying
the root per host with the -hostRoots command line option:
mpirun -np 6 simpleFoam -parallel -ioRanks '(0 3)' \
-hostRoots '("machineA" "/tmp/" "machineB" "/tmp")'
The hostRoots option is followed by a list of machine name + root directory, the
machine name can contain regular expressions.
New: hostCollated
-----------------
The new hostCollated fileHandler automatically sets the 'ioRanks' according to
the host name with the lowest rank e.g. to run simpleFoam on 6 processors with
ranks 0-2 on machineA and ranks 3-5 on machineB with the machines specified in
the hostfile:
mpirun -np 6 --hostfile hostfile simpleFoam -parallel -fileHandler hostCollated
This is equivalent to
mpirun -np 6 --hostfile hostfile simpleFoam -parallel -fileHandler collated -ioRanks '(0 3)'
This example will write directories:
processors6_0-2/
processors6_3-5/
A typical example would use distributed data e.g. no two nodes, machineA and
machineB, each with three processes:
decomposePar -fileHandler collated -case cavity
# Copy case (constant/*, system/*, processors6/) to master:
rsync -a cavity machineA:/tmp/
# Create root on slave:
ssh machineB mkdir -p /tmp/cavity
# Run
mpirun --hostfile hostfile icoFoam \
-case /tmp/cavity -parallel -fileHandler hostCollated \
-hostRoots '("machineA" "/tmp" "machineB" "/tmp")'
Contributed by Mattijs Janssens
- The iterator for a HashSet dereferences directly to its key.
- Eg,
for (const label patchi : patchSet)
{
...
}
vs.
forAllConstIter(labelHashSet, patchSet, iter)
{
const label patchi = iter.key();
...
}
- controlled by the the 'printExecutionFormat' InfoSwitch in
etc/controlDict
// Style for "ExecutionTime = " output
// - 0 = seconds (with trailing 's')
// - 1 = day-hh:mm:ss
ExecutionTime = 112135.2 s ClockTime = 113017 s
ExecutionTime = 1-07:08:55.20 ClockTime = 1-07:23:37
- Callable via the new Time::printExecutionTime() method,
which also helps to reduce clutter in the applications.
Eg,
runTime.printExecutionTime(Info);
vs
Info<< "ExecutionTime = " << runTime.elapsedCpuTime() << " s"
<< " ClockTime = " << runTime.elapsedClockTime() << " s"
<< nl << endl;
--
ENH: return elapsedClockTime() and clockTimeIncrement as double
- previously returned as time_t, which is less portable.
- handling of dead links (find -L -delete unsupported)
- remove ignore case flag on 's/../../i' used in have_scotch script.
It is unneeded and not tolerated by Darwin's sed.
- avoid embedded comments in EXE_INC (Make/options files), which do
not work well with the OSX LLVM cpp.
It strips out the comments but also removes the continuation char.
STYLE: adjust notes about paraview library locations
- generalize some of the library extensions (.so vs .dylib).
Provide as wmake 'sysFunctions'
- added note about unsupported/incomplete system support
- centralize detection of ThirdParty packages into wmake/ subdirectory
by providing a series of scripts in the spirit of GNU autoconfig.
For example,
have_boost, have_readline, have_scotch, ...
Each of the `have_<package>` scripts will generally provide the
following type of functions:
have_<package> # detection
no_<package> # reset
echo_<package> # echoing
and the following type of variables:
HAVE_<package> # unset or 'true'
<package>_ARCH_PATH # root for <package>
<package>_INC_DIR # include directory for <package>
<package>_LIB_DIR # library directory for <package>
This simplifies the calling scripts:
if have_metis
then
wmake metisDecomp
fi
As well as reducing clutter in the corresponding Make/options:
EXE_INC = \
-I$(METIS_INC_DIR) \
-I../decompositionMethods/lnInclude
LIB_LIBS = \
-L$(METIS_LIB_DIR) -lmetis
Any additional modifications (platform-specific or for an external build
system) can now be made centrally.
- the API-versioned calls (eg, tecini142, teczne142, tecpoly142, tecend142),
the limited availability of the SDK and lack of adequate testing make
proper maintenance very difficult.
- IOstreamOption class to encapsulate format, compression, version.
This is ordered to avoid internal padding in the structure, which
reduces several bytes of memory overhead for stream objects
and other things using this combination of data.
Byte-sizes:
old IOstream:48 PstreamBuffers:88 Time:928
new IOstream:24 PstreamBuffers:72 Time:904
====
STYLE: remove support for deprecated uncompressed/compressed selectors
In older versions, the system/controlDict used these types of
specifications:
writeCompression uncompressed;
writeCompression compressed;
As of DEC-2009, these were deprecated in favour of using normal switch
names:
writeCompression true;
writeCompression false;
writeCompression on;
writeCompression off;
Now removed these deprecated names and treat like any other unknown
input and issue a warning. Eg,
Unknown compression specifier 'compressed', assuming no compression
====
STYLE: provide Enum of stream format names (ascii, binary)
====
COMP: fixed incorrect IFstream construct in FIREMeshReader
- spurious bool argument (presumably meant as uncompressed) was being
implicitly converted to a versionNumber. Now caught by making
IOstreamOption::versionNumber constructor explicit.
- bad version specifier in changeDictionary
- the expansions were previously required as slash to follow, but
now either are possible.
"<case>", "<case>/" both yield the same as "$FOAM_CASE" and
will not have a trailing slash in the result. The expansion of
"$FOAM_CASE/" will however have a trailing slash.
- adjust additional files using these expansions
- both autoPtr and tmp are defined with an implicit construct from
nullptr (but with explicit construct from a pointer to null).
Thus is it safe to use 'nullptr' when returning an empty autoPtr or tmp.
- when constructing dimensioned fields that are to be zero-initialized,
it is preferrable to use a form such as
dimensionedScalar(dims, Zero)
dimensionedVector(dims, Zero)
rather than
dimensionedScalar("0", dims, 0)
dimensionedVector("zero", dims, vector::zero)
This reduces clutter and also avoids any suggestion that the name of
the dimensioned quantity has any influence on the field's name.
An even shorter version is possible. Eg,
dimensionedScalar(dims)
but reduces the clarity of meaning.
- NB: UniformDimensionedField is an exception to these style changes
since it does use the name of the dimensioned type (instead of the
regIOobject).
