Release Notes for blueCFD-Core 2017-1

These release notes address the changes made for the 2017-1 release, which is divided into the following topics:

• In section Software provided with installers is provided further information about the installer blueCFD-Core-2017-1-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-2017-1-win64-setup.exe

  • MSys2 x86_64, from 29th of September 2017. 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 5.2.0-1
    • Many other packages are already pre-installed. To get a full list after installation, run in MSys2: pacman -Q

  • OpenFOAM 5.x, commit 5f49a69300a1e15b9d927966960751b688e3dd86, 31st of October 2017.

  • ThirdParty 5.x, commit 382629e0285fb2a3fa277dadcbfb5023f619c030, 17th of August 2017.

  • 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. Upgraded ported code to work with OpenFOAM 5.x (up to commit 5f49a69300a1e15b9d927966960751b688e3dd86, 31st of October 2017), based on the changes done up to blueCFD-Core 2016-2.

   • Associated to this, MS-MPI 7.1 and 8.1 are supported, with MS-MPI 7.1 used by default, so that it’s easier to support blueCFD-Core 2016.

2. Using MSys2 installer 20161025, updated on the 29th of September 2017.

3. gnuplot 5.2.0 was installed via MSys2 package manager, instead of providing it as a separate package. The folder /mingw64/share/gnuplot/docs was added manually, by getting the one in the official Gnuplot 5.2.0 zip package for Windows and the Gnuplot reference card gpcard.pdf was retrieved from Gnuplot’s documentation page.

4. ParaView 5.4.1 with Qt5, OpenGL2 and MPI is provided in the AddOns folder with the installer.

5. Using GCC’s std::thread and std::mutex that is part of the standard C++11, instead of using pthread, so that this way we can keep compatibility forward when new implementations are done on the thread handling on Windows in the GCC+mingw-w64 stack.

6. Fixed how Alt+F2 works, where it now will start the new terminal in the same folder as the previous terminal. This was achieved by following these instructions: mintty wiki Tips, “Spawning a new terminal window in the same directory”

7. Finished resolving Issue #2, by undoing the padding hack. For people trying to compile OpenFOAM 5.x in blueCFD-Core 2016-1, please run the following commands to undo this change:

   foam
   git revert 4eb2a93149a5fbc509166be897df4d1532ca6bcb
   

8. Resolved Issue #4 for signal management in sigStopAtWriteNow and sigWriteNow, although it’s not yet entirely clear if it’s working properly or not.

9. The collated IO feature is not working with blueCFD-Core 2017-1. More details about this limitation are being tracker in Issue #68.

10. Issue #22 is fixed, namely the tutorial case multiphase/compressibleInterDyMFoam/RAS/sloshingTank2D is now working properly.

11. Partially implemented the objectives in Issue #57. More specifically, the ability to run Alltest, Allrun and foamRunTutorials with cases only in serial or parallel mode, as well as being able to launch several cases at the same time.

12. Implemented stack trace once again, by using and fixing the old code that was last used in blueCFD(-Core) 2.1. More details are provided in Issue #7. However, this depends on using cv2pdb from the project cv2pdb (build from 9th of October 2017, 23h48m) for generating PDB files. NOTES:

    • The build being used of cv2pdb is a 32-bit binary that can only support DLL files up to 1GB of size. See Issue #7 for more details.

    • Furthermore cv2pdb will only work if Microsoft Visual Studio is installed, so that either the DLL files mspdb80.dll or mspdb100.dll are installed.

13. Fixed Issue #69, which means that it no longer outputs duplicate mentions to file dependency generation. Additionally, have implemented an adaptive long file path support, so that it’s used only when necessary.

14. Fixed Issue #70, making it no longer necessary to run wmake twice with wmakeVerifyDependencies in between for applications. The downside is that it will forcefully load all libraries instead of just those that are necessary.

15. The installer now adds all of the applications that have the -parallel option to the Windows Firewall, as part of the Issue #59 for the installer creation of blueCFD-Core 2017-1.