Release 21.12

Spack Package Deployment

With this release there will be a Spack package for installing GPI-Space and all its dependencies (i.e. versions 21.09 and 21.12). Installing GPI-Space could be as simple as spack install gpi-space.

NOTE:

The package will only be available some time after the release. In the meantime, some reading material on Spack:

Spack - Getting Started

Spack - Basic Usage

API CHANGE: Standalone Util-RPC

GPI-Space’s RPC is now a standalone project with its own CMake package configuration file and has been renamed to util-rpc. A few more things to note:

util-rpc is currently installed alongside GPISpace which is including it through its own CMake package configuration file. util-rpc-config.cmake has the same root directory as GPISpace (i.e. util-rpc_ROOT == GPISpace_ROOT)
A util-rpc submodule can no longer exist in a GPISpace application. Keeping it will result in CMake errors.
The target RPC is now called Util::RPC.
Compilation now requires a C++14 capable compiler.
In GPISpace util-rpc’s tests are disabled by default, to enable them UTIL_RPC_BUILD_TESTING needs to be set to ON.

API CHANGE: `fhg/util/boost/program_options` has been merged into `util-generic`

fhg/util/boost/program_options has been merged into util-generic and is no longer available as a separate repository.

Changes:

#include <fhg/util/boost/program_options/...> becomes #include <util-generic/boost/program_options/...>
fhg/util/boost/program_options headers are now installed with util-generic and are therefore part of the public API.

API CHANGE: Standalone Util-Qt

GPISpace’s util-qt is now a standalone project with its own CMake package configuration file. A few more things to note:

util-qt is currently installed alongside GPISpace which is including it through its own CMake package configuration file.
util-qt is only installed if GPISpace is built with GSPC_WITH_MONITOR_APP=ON (default)
util-qt submodule can no longer exist in a GPISpace application. Keeping it will result in CMake errors.
In addition to the Util::Qt target, there is now also a Util::Qt-Headers target for the public headers.
Compilation now requires a C++14 capable compiler.
In GPISpace util-qt’s tests are disabled by default, to enable them UTIL_QT_BUILD_TESTING needs to be set to ON.

New System Testing Functionality

A new System Test functionality is introduced and demonstrated on the aggregate_sum example from the How-To-Use instructions. In contrast to the old system tests, this one is truly independent of build tree information. This was achieved through a new indirection which makes CTest call a script to perform a separate CMake configuration, build, and execution. The newly introduced script is also usable outside of util_cmake_add_system_test.

Improvements to Util-CMake’s parse_arguments

A new and improved cmake_parse_arguments wrapper util_cmake_parse_arguments with a more powerful and flexible argument definition syntax is added. At the same time, the old _parse_arguments and _parse_arguments_with_unknown will be removed in the foreseeable future. util_cmake_parse_arguments features:

required arguments
a flag to trigger an error message in case of unparsed arguments
a flag to trigger an error message in case of keywords with missing values
automatic generation of a usage message
a flag to trigger the usage message in case the HELP argument is set
default values
appending of additional values to the default

Util-CMake Feature for Colored Strings

A functionality is provided to color strings for console outputs using escape codes. The function util_cmake_color_string is located in util-cmake/colors.cmake.

Fixes

API CHANGE: The Petri net compiler pnetc now includes --std=c++14 in the flags used to compile the generated wrapper code. It used to be --std=c++11 before.
When ports are connected with places of wrong type, then the error messages are now always correctly printing the direction, e.g. connect-in and not connect-0 any longer as in former versions of GPI-Space.

Miscellaneous

API CHANGE: The file fhg/util/dl-hpp is no longer installed. Please use util-generic/dynamic_linking.hpp which provides the same interface.
CentOS 6 has reached its End Of Life on November 30th 2020. Dropping support for this system was necessary to reduce the maintenance effort.
The minimum supported version of GCC is increased to 5.5.0.