v1906 User Upgrade Guide

• Configuration / Environment
  • Mesa / llvm
  • Direct access to compiler settings
  • Space characters in fileName
• Input Dictionaries
• Surface sampling
  • Removed
• Removed items

Configuration / Environment

Mesa / llvm

If using a non-clang compiler suite (gcc, intel, etc) the additional lbraries required for mesa with llvm pipelines may not be found. These can now be added as a mesa_llvm configuration within the vtk config file. Can use the usual types of settings:

• mesa_llvm=llvm-4.0.1
• mesa_llvm=none
• mesa_llvm=system

Direct access to compiler settings

Keywords: wmake -show options for compiler information

When building other libraries directly, with autoconfig or cmake, it will be useful or necessary to use the same compiler and compiler settings as are used by OpenFOAM itself. These are now obtained from the wmake show options and can be used to set corresponding environment variables. For example,

CC="$(wmake -show-c)" CFLAGS="$(wmake -show-cflags)" ./configure

Here is the correspondence to commonly used environment variables

In some situations it can also be useful to have the compiler and flags together (similar to mpicc -show and mpicxx -show):

wmake -show-compile-c
wmake -show-compile-cxx

This system replaces the additional environment variables (WM_CC, WM_CFLAGS, WM_CXX, WM_CXXFLAGS, WM_LDFLAGS) used in previous versions, but which have been proved to be inadequate for a number of reasons:

• fragile to maintain
• not guaranteed to be consistent
• does not provided the full compilation flags
• annoying clutter for the environment

Space characters in fileName

Allowing space characters in fileName is now user-configurable.

Having whitespace in fileName can be somewhat fragile since it means that the fileName components do not necessarily correspond to a Foam::word. But in many cases it will work provided that spaces are not present in the final portion of the simulation directory itself.

InfoSwitches
{
    // Allow space character in fileName (use with caution)
    // Default: 0 for non-Windows, 1 for Windows
    allowSpaceInFileName    1;
}

Input Dictionaries

• The compile-time value of foamVersion::api is now exported as an internal environment variable FOAM_API, which also makes it available for dictionaries. This value is independent of anything set in the parent environment.

• The foamDictionary utility now accepts a -precision option to specify non-default precision values. This is needed since the precision used by foamDictionary is normally unaffected by the contents or even the presence/absence of a system/controlDict file.

• Example annotated dictionaries are now centralized under etc/, which makes them more convenient to find. This location becomes especially necessary when the OpenFOAM installation is without sources or tutorials.

• The new foamGetDict utility provides a convenient means of retrieving an OpenFOAM dictionary file from etc/caseDicts/. For example,

  foamGetDict decomposeParDict

  Existing files will not be overwritten.

Surface sampling

As mentioned in the Release notes, surface sampling and writers have received an overhaul and improved functionality. For the end-user, these are the most relevant points:

• surfaces can be specified as sub-dictionaries or (as previously) a single list entry.
• optional enabled keyword to selectively disable a single sampled surface.
• each surface can have its own output format, or format options.
• the ability to store sampled information to an internal registry for reuse with averaging, surfaceFieldValue, runTimePostProcessing etc.

Removed

All surfMesh samplers have been removed since this functionality has been superseded by the improved sampledSurfaces. This functionality was originally added to allow sampling of volume fields onto a surface in order to perform calculations on them. Moreover, the sampling framework essentially mirrored that of sampledSurfaces, but was less complete.

It is now possible to store sampled surfaces on a registry and do calculation with their fields. This is the preferred method, and thus removing the surfMeshSample duplicate code.

Removed items

Reduced the clutter in the bin/ directory by removing many old, unused legacy and deprecated tools.

• Information about deprecated applications is now addressed via wiki pages.

• Less frequently used scripts are now located in bin/tools/

  • findEmptyMake
  • foamAllHC
  • foamUpdateCaseFileHeader