Overview
The 8.6.1 release of ESMF is a patch release to the previously released 8.6.0, introducing 2 minor feature enhancements and 14 fixes in various areas such as ESMF Config, HConfig, and ESMF Field.
Due to user requests, ESMF Config was enhanced to remove the single line limitation of 1024 characters. In addition, the ESMF library target within the FindESMF module has been changed to conform to the imported library standard. Both feature enhancements allow more flexibility and usability.
Several corrections were introduced, such as the returning of index space information by ESMF_FieldGet(), start_index attribute in ESMFMesh unstructured mesh file in edge cases, interpretation of ESMF_RUNTIME_ environment variable keys by ESMF_Initialize(), ESMF_NVML=OFF build option, building of ESMF with ESMF_NO_GETHOSTID, equality operators in the ESMF_HConfig and ESMF_HConfigIter, and ISO_C_BINDING symbols export via the ESMF Fortran module.
Incremental progress was also made in several other areas of the framework. In ESMF_Config, several enhancements and fixes were made to cover more edge cases such as dealing with string length, special characters, and blank values.
Note: ESMF_Config will be deprecated in a future major release for the preferred ESMF_HConfig class, which supports YAML coded configuration files. Deprecation has not been scheduled at this time due to the high impact it will have on existing configuration files.
Release Notes
- This patch release is backward compatible with ESMF 8.6.0. There were no API changes in this release.
- No bit-for-bit changes are expected for this release compared to ESMF 8.6.0.
- No changes were made to the ESMF regrid weight generation methods and applications. The ESMF tables summarizing the ESMF regridding status are unchanged.
- The index space information (minIndex, maxIndex, elementCount) returned by method ESMF_FieldGet() is now correct for a Field on any ESMF_STAGGERLOC (Grid) or ESMF_MESHLOC (Mesh) location.
- The ESMF_Config class has been enhanced by removing the 1024 character limit. It is now possible to set strings to values longer than 1024 characters. The maximum size is determined by the ESMF_Config buffer size, which is 256k.
- Multiple bugs in the implementation of ESMF_Config have been fixed.
- A bug has been fixed that prevented changing values to a different string length.
- It is now possible to enclose number sign (#) characters within single or double quotes in order to include this character in string values.
- It is now possible to enclose apostrophes / single quote (‘) characters within double quotes in order to include this character in string values.
- It is now possible to enclose double quote (“) characters within single quotes in order to include this character in string values.
- It is now possible to set values to blank and change blank values to non-blank values.
- Note: ESMF_Config will be deprecated in a future major release for the preferred ESMF_HConfig class, which supports YAML coded configuration files. Deprecation has not been scheduled at this time due to the high impact it will have on existing configuration files.
- The ESMF library target within the FindESMF module for CMake has been changed to ‘ESMF::ESMF’. This conforms to the imported library standard as seen in modules provided by Kitware. For backwards compatibility ‘ESMF’ has been added as an alias target.
- The issue of inadvertently exporting ISO_C_BINDING symbols via the ESMF Fortran module has been addressed.
- ESMF_RUNTIME_ environment variable keys that are set on the top level of the configuration file ingested by the ESMF_Initialize() method are now correctly interpreted.
- The ESMF_NVML=OFF build option now works correctly as documented.
- The build of libesmftrace_preload.dylib on some Darwin (Mac) systems with OpenMPI has been fixed. (Incorrect link flags were being used in this build.)
- The problem of building ESMF with macro ESMF_NO_GETHOSTID defined has been fixed.
- The ESMFMESH unstructured mesh file format now correctly begins the connection index calculation at the start_index value when the start_index attribute is attached to the elementConn variable. Previously, beginning in ESMF 8.3.0, this attribute had been incorrectly ignored.
- The ESMF_HConfig and ESMF_HConfigIter equality operators have been fixed. Previously, on some platforms, identical objects could be detected as not equal which could lead to problems with iterations not terminating correctly, etc.
Known Issues
- Same as 8.6.0.
Documentation
- ESMF Reference Manual for Fortran
- ESMF Reference Manual for C
- ESMF User Guide
- NUOPC Layer Reference
- Building a NUOPC Model
- ESMPy Doc