COMP: delay evaluation of fieldToken enumeration types
- lazy evaluation at runTime instead of compile-time to make the code
independent of initialization order.
Otherwise triggers problems on gcc-4.8.5 on some systems where
glibc is the same age, or older.
For example,
$ someSolver -info-switch writeOptionalEntries
- note that values changed via the command-line are changed after the
etc/controlDict entries, but *before* any case-local
system/controlDict entries.
However, in many testing cases the command-line options eliminate
the need for such local file modifications.
ENH: cleanup handling of local debug switches in Time
- add as methods directly on simpleObjectRegistry to avoid code
duplication
STYLE: adjust internal naming of ITstream parameters
- this can be useful for preloading of libraries, or for utilities
that don't use system/controlDict.
The additional libraries can be specified individually:
myUtil -lib lib1 -lib lib2 -lib lib3
When specified like this, the options add up.
Or as a 'captured' list using OpenFOAM's standard arg list handling:
myUtil -lib '(' lib1 lib2 lib3 ')'
myUtil -lib \( lib1 lib2 lib3 \)
or as single argument list:
myUtil -lib '("lib1" "lib2" "lib3")'
When specified as a single argument, would normally take advantage
of the transparent handling of word vs fileName and omit the string
quotes:
myUtil -lib '(lib1 lib2 lib3)'
ENH: dlOpen error messages now propagated into dlLibraryTable
- this makes the context more relevant and also avoids the previous
annoyance of double warnings (one from the POSIX loader, and one
from dlLibraryTable)
STYLE: mark -noFunctionObjects and -withFunctionObjects as 'advanced'
- reduces clutter. Still visible with -help-full
- when windows portable executables (.exe or .dll) files are loaded,
their dependent libraries not fully loaded. For OpenFOAM this means
that the static constructors which are responsible for populating
run-time selection tables are not triggered, and most of the run-time
selectable models will simply not be available.
Possible Solution
=================
Avoid this problem by defining an additional library symbol such as
the following:
extern "C" void libName_Load() {}
in the respective library, and tag this symbol as 'unresolved' for
the linker so that it will attempt to resolve it at run-time by
loading the known libraries until it finds it. The link line would
resemble the following:
-L/some/path -llibName -ulibName_Load
Pros:
- Allows precise control of forced library loading
Cons:
- Moderately verbose adjustment of some source files (even with macro
wrapping for the declaration).
- Adjustment of numerous Make/options files and somewhat ad hoc
in nature.
- Requires additional care when implementing future libraries and/or
applications.
- This is the solution taken by the symscape patches (Richard Smith)
Possible Solution
=================
Avoid this problem by simply force loading all linked libraries.
This is done by "scraping" the information out of the respective
Make/options file (after pre-processing) and using that to define
the library list that will be passed to Foam::dlOpen() at run-time.
Pros:
- One-time (very) minimal adjustment of the sources and wmake toolchain
- Automatically applies to future applications
Cons:
- Possibly larger memory footprint of application (since all dependent
libraries are loaded).
- Possible impact on startup time (while loading libraries)
- More sensitive to build failures. Since the options files are
read and modified based on the existence of the dependent
libraries as a preprocessor step, if the libraries are initially
unavailable for the first attempt at building the application,
the dependencies will be inaccurate for later (successful) builds.
- This is solution taken by the bluecape patches (Bruno Santos)
Adopted Solution
================
The approach taken by Bruno was adopted in a modified form since
this appears to be the most easily maintained.
Additional Notes
================
It is always possible to solve this problem by defining a corresponding
'libs (...)' entry in the case system/controlDict, which forces a dlOpen
of the listed libraries. This is obviously less than ideal for large-scale
changes, but can work to resolve an individual problem.
The peldd utility (https://github.com/gsauthof/pe-util), which is
also packaged as part of MXE could provide yet another alternative.
Like ldd it can be used to determine the library dependencies of
binaries or libraries. This information could be used to define an
additional load layer for Windows.
- reduces some dictionary clutter and probably looks less confusing
than having an ending that may not correspond to the current OS.
Eg, "fvOptions" instead of "libfvOptions.so", "libfvOptions.dylib" ...
- convenience dlOpen method for multiple files
- amalgamate dlSym() and dlSymFound() into a single dlSymFind() backend
with optional 'required' argument. This makes it possible to
query and assign at once.
- extracts values from the arch "LSB;label=32;scalar=64" header entry
to provision for managing dissimilar primitive sizes.
Compensate for the additional IOobject members by narrowing the types
for the (objectState, readOption, writeOption) enumerations
- provide relativePath() for argList and for Time.
These are relative to the case globalPath().
Eg,
Info<< "output: " << runTime.relativePath(outputFile) << nl;
- for some special cases we wish to mark command-line arguments as
being optional, in order to do our own treatment. For example,
when an arbitrary number of arguments should be allowed.
Now tag this situation with argList::noMandatoryArgs().
The argList::argsMandatory() query can then be used in any further
logic, including the standard default argument checking.
- with the new default check, can consolidate the special-purpose
"setRootCaseNonMandatoryArgs.H"
into the regular
"setRootCase.H"
- revert to a simple "setRootCase.H" and move all the listing related
bits to a "setRootCaseLists.H" file. This leaves the information
available for solvers, or whoever else wishes, without being
introduced everywhere.
- add include guards and scoping to the listing files and rename to
something less generic.
listOptions.H -> setRootCaseListOptions.H
listOutput.H -> setRootCaseListOutput.H
- was PREFIX/site, now PROJECT/site
This avoids several issues when installing OpenFOAM in clusters
without an intermediate OpenFOAM-specific installation prefix.
The 'site' directory may have a reserved meaning in these situations
and it is undesirable to 'leak' upwards into the parent directory to
look for configuration files.
Placing the default within the project directory avoids this.
Alternative locations can be given via the WM_PROJECT_SITE variable.
- use std::string instead of c-string for the string constants
- centralize some definitions of resources into foamVersion.H
Now expose some of the hard-coded values used in foamEtcFiles()
so that they can be known or even overridden as required.
Relocate to src/OpenFOAM/include as a constant location.
- foamVersion.H now includes stdFoam.H for consistent use
of compatibility compiler defines.
- move forward declaration of Detail, Module namespaces to stdFoam.H
- doxygen documentation of Foam namespace in stdFoam.H
- with the 'cwd' optimization switch it is possible to select the
preferred behaviour for the cwd() function.
A value of 0 causes cwd() to return the physical directory,
which is what getcwd() and `pwd -P` return.
Until now, this was always the standard behaviour.
With a value of 1, cwd() instead returns the logical directory,
which what $PWD contains and `pwd -L` returns.
If any of the sanity checks fail (eg, PWD points to something other
than ".", etc), a warning is emitted and the physical cwd() is
returned instead.
Apart from the optical difference in the output, this additional
control helps workaround file systems with whitespace or other
characters in the directory that normally cause OpenFOAM to balk.
Using a cleaner symlink elsewhere should skirt this issue.
Eg,
cd $HOME
ln -s "/mounted volume/user/workdir" workdir
cd workdir
# start working with OpenFOAM
- centralizes IOobject handling and treatment of alternative locations.
If an alternative file location is specified, it will be used instead.
- provide decompositionMethod::canonicalName instead of using
"decomposeParDict" in various places.
General:
* -roots, -hostRoots, -fileHandler
Specific:
* -to <coordinateSystem> -from <coordinateSystem>
- Display -help-compat when compatibility or ignored options are available
STYLE: capitalization of options text
- advanced options are not displayed with -help, but only with
-help-full, which helps retain a better overview of the standard
options. Replaces previous ad hoc suppression of -listSwitches,
-listRegisteredSwitches etc.
- relocate some standard functionality to TimePaths to allow a lighter
means of managing time directories without using the entire Time
mechanism.
- optional enableLibs for Time construction (default is on)
and a corresponding argList::noLibs() and "-no-libs" option
STYLE:
- mark Time::outputTime() as deprecated MAY-2016
- use pre-increment for runTime, although there is no difference in
behaviour or performance.
- add additional control via a Foam::infoDetailLevel flag, which is
supported by a 'DetailLevel' macro. Eg,
DetailLevel << "some information" << nl
- When infoDetailLevel is zero, the stdout for all Foam::system() calls
are also redirected to stderr to prevent child output from
appearing on the parent.
- close stdin before exec in system call.
-dry-run : perform check only and no writing
-dry-run-write: perform check and write to the next time step. This
also triggers function objects that fire on the call to write()
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
- since PackedBoolList is now a compatibility typedef for bitSet,
it is useful to have an additional means of distinction.
STYLE: simplify internal version tests and compiler defines.
- the API version is now conveyed via the OPENFOAM define directly.
The older OPENFOAM_PLUS define is provided for existing code.
- this removes an OS-specific dependency (eg, drand48_r is not POSIX)
and allows easier use of other random number generators.
The Rand48 generator has identical behaviour and period as the
lrand48() library routine, but holds its own seed and state
(which makes it re-entrant) and can be combined with other
random distributions.
However, when using the modified form to obtain scalar values
they will not be identical to what drand48() yields.
This is because drand48() uses the raw 48-bit values to directly
set the mantissa of an IEEE double where as the newer distribution
normalizes based on the 32-bit value.
STYLE: simplify code in Random::shuffle and use Swap
- use succincter method names that more closely resemble dictionary
and HashTable method names. This improves method name consistency
between classes and also requires less typing effort:
args.found(optName) vs. args.optionFound(optName)
args.readIfPresent(..) vs. args.optionReadIfPresent(..)
...
args.opt<scalar>(optName) vs. args.optionRead<scalar>(optName)
args.read<scalar>(index) vs. args.argRead<scalar>(index)
- the older method names forms have been retained for code compatibility,
but are now deprecated
- allows (for example) splitting a user string on whitespace and
passing this to system as a list of arguments, thus bypassing any
implicit use of 'sh'.
- system() with optional background, for spawning processes.
- in rare cases we may wish to have command-line arguments that are
non-mandatory. This can now be reflected in the usage output, provided
that the argList::nonMandatoryArgs() has been used.
- added setRootCaseNonMandatoryArgs.H that applies the
argList::nonMandatoryArgs() settings and otherwise performs largely
as per setRootCase.H, except that the check for mandatory arguments
is deferred to later user code.
- consistent with C++ STL conventions, the reverse iterators should
use operator++ to transit the list from rbegin() to rend().
The previous implementation used raw pointers, which meant that they
had the opposite behaviour: operator-- to transit from rbegin() to
rend().
The updated version only has operator++ defined, thus the compiler
should catch any possible instances where people were using the old
(incorrect) versions.
- updated forAllReverseIters() and forAllConstReverseIters() macros to
be consistent with new implementation and with C++ STL conventions.
