Release Notes for blueCFD-Core 2024-1

These release notes address the changes made for the 2024-1 release, which is divided into the following topics:

• In section Software provided with installers is provided further information about the installer blueCFD-Core-2024-1-win64-setup.exe.

• Section Cumulative changes and notes lists what we provide in the git development branch blueCFD-Core branch 12.

Software provided with installers

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

• blueCFD-Core-2024-1-win64-setup.exe

  • MSYS2 x86_64, from 22th of July 2024. 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 3.30.0
    • GCC 14.2.0
    • GCC 12.2.0 (used for OpenFOAM 12)
    • GDB 15.1
    • Git 2.45.2
    • Meld 3.22.2
    • Python 3.11.9
    • Gnuplot 6.0.1
    • Metis 5.1.0
    • ParMetis 4.0.3
    • Many other packages are already pre-installed. To get a full list after installation, run in MSYS2: pacman -Q

  • OpenFOAM 12, commit 6aa359dae6, 13th of August 2024.

  • ThirdParty 12, commit cab725f5e7, 7th of July 2024.

  • Notepad2 4.2.25

  • ParaView 5.11.2, 64-bit, built with the options: Qt5, OpenGL2.
    • Using the pre-built one from the ParaView.org website.
  • MS-MPI 10.1.2 is the default MPI version, which can optionally be installed later on.
    • Note: Version 10.1.3 already existed when blueCFD-Core 2024 was being developped, but Scotch and Metis (and their parallel sibling implementations) were linked to 10.1.1, which is still compatible with 10.1.2.

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 12 (up to commit 6aa359dae69662fc09b4f9e64b9a4fc365fef135, 13th of August 2024), based on the changes done up to blueCFD-Core 2020-1.

   • Associated to this, MS-MPI 10.1 is used by default, being possible to build with support for MS-MPI 7.1 and 8.1.

   • If older versions of blueCFD-Core are meant to be used, then follow on those the instructions using older MS-MPI versions than installed in Windows.

2. Using MSYS2 installer 20240507, updated on the 22th of July 2024.

3. gnuplot 6.0.1 was installed via MSYS2 package manager, including updates made to OpenFOAM’s foamMonitor script.

4. ParaView 5.11.2 with Qt5 and OpenGL2, provided in the AddOns folder with the installer.

5. Sync bot has been implemented, to synchronize between blueCFD-Core-dev and OpenFOAM-dev repositories/branches, as well as blueCFD-Core-12 and OpenFOAM-12.

6. New wiki page: Preparing a new MSYS2 installation for blueCFD‐Core development

7. New section Using wmakeListAllIncludedLibraries to revise the list of necessary libraries in the wiki page for building custom code.

8. Improved re-build performance, by having our wmake-based scripts use the same date as the original file they re-direct to.

9. Implemented a new function object filterObjectsAsFiles, part of a new library blueCFDCoreFOs for function objects. The filterObjectsAsFiles library assists in renaming files that do not work as-is on Windows and require renaming. This gives more control to the users, instead of having this feature hard-coded. All relevant tutorials have been revised accordingly to include this renaming strategy. For more details, look into the file etc/caseDicts/functions/control/filterObjectsAsFiles.

10. Resolved the issues listed here: Milestone: blueCFD-Core 2024-1

11. Fixed several new issues related to loading libraries that OpenFOAM wants to depend on others, but on Windows it ignores due to not linking directly. This was overcome by extending the force-load feature to rely on a defined resource string that our method MSwindows::dlOpen() will now look into to load more libraries. This will enforce all libraries listed in Make/options for each library to be loaded, as long as they are loaded at runtime.

12. Diagnosed that there were several issues in compiling OpenFOAM 12 with the default GCC 14.2 which comes with MSYS2 at this time, requiring the workaround of using an older packaged GCC 12.2 from MSYS2 within the ThirdParty-12 folder.

13. Extended and improved support for long file and folder paths for building source code, due to some tutorial cases which require very long folder names (e.g. multiphaseEuler/pipeBend). Notes:

    • The workaround relies on using the old 8.3 naming protocol from Windows 95, which will not work in some Windows installations (e.g. Windows Server editions). The instructions to turn on this feature are documented here: Q&A #253 - Enabling support for the old 8.3 filename and extension format

    • Nevertheless, the physical limitation of this workaround can support files within a folder tree with 18 nested levels, due to the 259 character limit for default paths on Windows.

14. Created the wiki page Known Working Tutorials, including information gathered for past versions as well.

15. Several open issues which only required documenting how to solve them, have been copied/moved-adapted to the Discussions section of the project. The Q&A section which was in the main project’s site, has been moved to the respective Q&A category at that Discussions section.