Code_saturne 1.4b released!

That would be great! Keep us informed if you achieve something
FYI Code_Saturne 1.3.2 has already been packaged for FreeBSD.

Hi again Claus,

I have a last comment on the HDF5 (parallel version) problem. It may be due to the fact that HDF5 was compiled with MPICH (or LAM) and Code_Saturne with OpenMPI. Two different MPI distributions are not binary compatible, that is probably why you get this message on the ABI issue. It would have probably worked if you had compiled Code_Saturne with MPICH (or LAM).

Thank you for your tutorial!

I have a few comments or precisions, but first I'll answer your question on HDF5.

The thing is I noted on your post that there was a MPI symbol (an MPI call, something like PMPI_ ...) in the HDF5 shared library, this means that HDF5 has been compiled with MPI support. Then I checked on my Ubuntu system (with Synaptic) with which MPI distribution HDF5 could be linked: this answer was MPICH or LAM/MPI but not OpenMPI... As the MPI libraries are not binary-compatible but source-compatible (not the same ABI = Application Binary Interface, even if they have the same API = Application Programming Interface), it leads to a conflict between HDF5 and Code_Saturne. A solution could be to compile Code_Saturne with MPICH or LAM/MPI, but we usually don't as they are older thant OpenMPI.

Back to the main subject now!

Firstly, thank you for having quoted me! You may precise that I'm part of Code_Saturne development team if you want to sound more official . Here are the main comments:

• Second paragraph:
  You wrote about the "needed libraries" but actually, most if not all of them are optional (MED/DF5 and CGNS for mesh reading, libxml2 for Interface file reading, METIS and MPI for parallelism, zlib for compressed mesh file reading -- except MED and CGNS, Tcl/Tk/Tix and Python for the Graphical User Interface) ; so perhaps could you add a note about the fact that they are not mandatory to run a simulation.
• Third paragraph:
  Actually, you don't need to set an INSTALLPATH variable, it isn't used by the installer nor the code. It's just an example for the README. There's also a small but important typo: "Envoloppe" instead of "Enveloppe". In addition, you could precise that for a 64bits Linux system, the user have to modify the macros_Linux_x86_64.mk file and not the macros_Linux.mk; nevertheless, the installer should handle all the switches and paths by itself.

We're about to upload a new patch for your problem with the CGNS library (the shared-versus-static problem). It would be interesting to modify the wiki afterwards. I'll try to do that.
And finally, one could add a note on the BLAS libraries (for optimization). It is not mandatory, but can decrease the simulation time by perhaps 10 to 20%. To use them on Ubuntu, you have to install the ATLAS-related packages, and chose the right libraries for your CPU.

Indeed, you also need additional packages in order to compile the LaTeX documentation (mainly for the "lmodern" LaTeX package IIRC) and the "fig2dev" tool to convert Xfig drawings to png pictures. One might also advise to install the Valgrind and ElecticFence packages for developpers (there are memory debuggers), but that's another topic!

I surely missed other typos (at least "buisness" instead of "business", page 2) but that wasn't my point.

Thanks again, you wrote a fairly good tuto on Ubuntu install!<br /><br />Post edited by: David Monfort, at: 2008/09/18 12:39