Release Notes for blueCFD-Core 2016-2

These release notes cover the changes made for the 2016-2 release:

• Software provided with installers lists the software stack made available through blueCFD-Core 2016-2.

• Section Cumulative changes and notes lists what we provide in the following git development branch:

  • blueCFD-Core branch 4.x
  • Note: Each branch refers to the respective OpenFOAM version.

Software provided with installers

The following software is provided inside the binary installer:

• blueCFD-Core-2016-2-win64-setup.exe

  • MSys2 x86_64, from 2016-02-05. We selected MSys2 because it provides an open source software development infrastructure and is more up-to-date than the original MSys project. There are several pre-installed packages, including:
    • CMake 3.4.1
    • GCC 5.3.0
    • GDB 7.11
    • Git 2.7.2
    • Meld 3.15.1
    • Python 2.7.11
    • Python 3.5.0
    • Many other packages are already pre-installed. To get a full list after installation, run in MSys2: pacman -Q

  • OpenFOAM 4.x, commit d214c8dfd5ba56dd442bae186fd4fb50dd35c338, 4th of September 2017.

  • ThirdParty 4.x, commit c6a26e582129e726d645aefd01f7cb2f64c89a6a, 12th of October 2016.

  • gnuplot 5.0.4

  • Notepad2 4.2.25

  • ParaView 5.1.2, 64-bit, built with the options: Qt4, OpenGL2, MPI.
    • Using the pre-built one from the ParaView.org website.
    • This needs MS-MPI to be installed in your system.
  • MS-MPI 7.1, which can optionally be installed later on, when needed.

Cumulative changes and notes

This release provides the following changes relative to the previous version of blueCFD-Core:

1. Synced with OpenFOAM 4.x, up to the commit d214c8dfd5ba56dd442bae186fd4fb50dd35c338, 4th of September 2017. This includes OpenFOAM 4.1 and all bug fixes release to this date.

2. Issue #23 has been fixed, where the environment variable was not being unset WM_COMPILER_ARCH.

3. Issue #3 has been fixed, where wmake/scripts/makeVersionResourceFile was having problems with file names with spaces. This was needed due to a bug in windres and the fix implemented works around the bug. See commit 4a515eeac92771e08961fe02f3cc2790861fb306 for more details.

4. Partially fixed Issue #2, namely the problem with some applications not building with using Allwmake, due to a bug in binutils ld. The fix isn’t perfect, because the bug is annoyingly hard to workaround, but the workaround to build with the -k option in Allwmake or run wmNonStop before doing a full build, will allow for a complete build in a single go. Several commits were used to try and work around the issue, so for more details, please check the history in Issue #2.

5. Fixed Issue #21, namely to fix the issues associated to updating the resource files, when using Allwmake -update. For more details, see the bug report and the associated commits listed there.

6. In preparation for supporting various OpenFOAM versions under the same MSys2 environment, we have improved the script ~/sourceOF to have two menus from which users can change the current version of OpenFOAM that is activated. The selected version will act as the new default for the next times that the user starts the MSys2 terminal. In order to not have the version defined by default, is to use the alias directly, e.g. of4-64.

7. Fixed Issue #26, namely the problem where loading up the shell environment would take 2 to 6 seconds to load up, depending on the machine it was running on. On our test machine, the loading time was trimmed down from 1.8s to 0.3s. For more details, see commit 4388b5f311b3c1ca656a8e010e7854f73554d2aa

8. Fixed Issue #32, namely the problem with wmakeVerifyExeDependencies not working with custom solvers and utilities. Instructions have also been added to the wiki on how to build custom code: Loose notes on building custom code.

9. Fixed Issue #33, by creating the wiki page Command line installation options for blueCFD Core installers.

10. Fixed Issue #35, by changing the TMP and TEMP environment variables when running on Windows. For more details, see the issue for more details.

11. Fixed Issue #36, by adding OpenFOAM’s MPI-specific library path to the search path in wmakeVerifyExeDependencies.

12. Fixed Issue #46 by adding the FAQ entry: How to install and/or use another version of ParaView

13. Fixed Issue #41, by adding the FAQ entry: Error message ‘Your “MINGW*” operating system is not supported by this release of OpenFOAM’

14. Fixed Issue #28, by adding the FAQ entry: How to use the blueCFD-Core (namely the MSys2) terminal and how to install new packages with the package manager

15. Fixed Issue #29, by adding the FAQ entry: How to install additional software, such as Gmsh

16. Fixed Issue #43, namely the script Allrun-pre for the tutorial mesh/foamyHexMesh/mixerVessel was not working properly in Windows, because of how the scripts were being automatically adjusted to work on Windows.

17. Fixed Issue #38, by adding the FAQ entry: No-slip surfaces show non-zero velocities in ParaView

18. Fixed Issue #6, by adding the FAQ entry: Known limitations with the built-in reader in ParaView

19. Fixed Issues #11 and #13, by adding a new FAQ entry that covers both issues: Having problems with application crashing after adding an external application

20. Fixed Issue #40, by adding more details to the FAQ entry Having other problems with custom source code, on how to use gcc and g++ when it’s installed in a path with spaces such as the default path C:\Program Files.

21. Added FAQ entry: Check the GPU support for OpenGL 2.x

22. Partially fixed the issue #16, namely to add Windows Command Line support back into blueCFD-Core. However, it’s currently hard-coded to a single version of OpenFOAM and we are aiming in the future to support other versions within the same blueCFD-Core installation, therefore a new Issue #50.

23. Fixed issue in ~/.inputrc which was overriding the conventional word deletion key combination Esc+Backspace. The problem was that the key combination Alt+Backspace for undo last combination was breaking the key combinations that used Esc.

24. Fixed bug that is triggered on Windows with the tutorial case multiphase/interDyMFoam/ras/mixerVesselAMI. The tutorial case was fixed in commit fb7497026993f145d18ca4f8f38010981e6ba535, but it’s still to be further diagnosed and reported upstream in issue #51.

25. Implemented workaround for the limitation that occurs when compiling assembly code to object file and/or when linking objects into the file binary. The workaround was implemented in commit 95ecc6d403dee726f8689fd66795f63b60bf50e2.

    • Specifically the limitation is in as.exe and ld.exe, which don’t fully support UNC paths that can be used for handling long paths, namely paths that have more than 259 characters (260 including the zero byte at the end of a C string).

26. Fixed Issue #34, which now allows to install blueCFD-Core 2016-2 as read-only and have it automatically operate on the user’s own Windows-assigned folders. For more details, see the respective FAQ entry: Read-only installation of blueCFD-Core

27. Fixed Issue #52, where very long path names to object files would lead to failure in compiling and/or linking those object files. It’s not a full-proof implementation, but it’s a workaround that works well when following the instructions in the wiki page Quick notes on how to update build, specially the section Setting up the work environment.

28. New FAQ entry for Read-only installation of blueCFD-Core has been created, for explaining how it worked in blueCFD-Core 2016-1 and how it now works in blueCFD-Core 2016-2.