Release Notes for blueCFD-Core 2017-2

These release notes address the changes made for the 2017-2 release, which is divided into the following topics:

• In section Software provided with installers is provided further information about the installer blueCFD-Core-2017-2-win64-setup.exe.

• Section Cumulative changes and notes lists what we provide in the git development branch blueCFD-Core branch 5.x.

Software provided with installers

Here is listed what software and respective versions are provided inside the binary installers, namely:

• blueCFD-Core-2017-2-win64-setup.exe

  • MSys2 x86_64, from 2018-02-20. 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 3.9.2
    • GCC 7.2.0
    • GDB 8.0.1
    • Git 2.14.1
    • Meld 3.16.4
    • Python 2.7.14
    • Python 3.6.2
    • Gnuplot 5.2.0-3 (updated)
    • Evince 3.26.0
    • Ghostcript 9.21
    • Many other packages are already pre-installed. To get a full list after installation, run in MSys2: pacman -Q

  • OpenFOAM 5.x, commit 19576d14a099e0b21e88a22b57fcf027d00ffa50, 26th of February 2018.

  • ThirdParty 5.x, commit a807587a7babd4d03b62794b26e5ef4105301416, 10th of February 2018.

  • Notepad2 4.2.25

  • ParaView 5.4.1, 64-bit, built with the options: Qt5, 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 is the default MPI version, which can optionally be installed later on.

  • MS-MPI 8.1, is provided as an optional alternative to 7.1 and will only be installed if selected in the custom installation options.

Cumulative changes and notes

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

1. Sync up branch blueCFD-Core-5.x with upstream OpenFOAM 5.x:

   • From OpenFOAM-5.x repository, up to commit 19576d14a099e0b21e88a22b57fcf027d00ffa50, 2018-02-26 14:12:48.

   • From ThirdParty-5.x repository, up to commit a807587a7babd4d03b62794b26e5ef4105301416, 2018-02-10 17:16:35.

2. Upgrade to latest Gnuplot on MSys2 so that it’s possible to generate plots of type PNG and JPEG, even though it still has a bug when using the help command. wgnuplot is now possible to be used as well. See Issue #78 for more details.

3. Ghostscript 9.21 and Evince 3.26.0 from MSys2 have also been installed, to make it easier to create and open PS, EPS and PDF files directly from the command line (see also Issue #78).

4. Removed our old - and now unused - script bin/fixPatchExeNames.

5. Replaced all symbolic linked scripts in the folder bin for the real ones, given that this feature is not properly supported on Windows.

6. Applied a bug fix that affected some installations of blueCFD-Core 2017, where Meld would not launch due to the lack of the highlight description files. See Issue #83 for more details.

7. Minor change made to $FOAM_SRC/OpenFOAM/db/dynamicLibrary/dynamicCode/dynamicCode.C, so that the absolute path is used instead of the relative path for the binaries that are built on-the-fly. This was needed due to the 260 maximum character path for file/folder paths on Windows.