[Users] [ET Trac] #2064: Add GiRaFFE to the Einstein Toolkit

[Zach Etienne]

Hi Erik,

Thanks for the feedback, and sorry to hear about the frustration. Indeed
BaikalETK is only a proof-of-principle code at the moment, in which the
second stage of development (copying the code blocks in the Jupyter
notebook to a proper, callable, git-friendly Python module) hasn't been
completed yet. I'm hoping that with more resources to combine ETK & NRPy+
development, the full modularization of all the ETK Jupyter notebooks can
be completed.

>  The only way I see is to undo my changes ("git checkout"), and then pull
your changes. In this case that's fine because there are no major changes,
but if I had made changes I'd be in trouble.

I generally do a `git diff` if `git pull` complains about conflicts, and
it's usually easy to see if anything significant has changed (and then do
`git checkout` if not). Maybe if I chose a standard way of prefixing lines
that are ignorable comments (e.g., "COMMENT: Finished BSSN symbolic
expressions in") a simple script could be written that checks for trivial
differences like these. Removing all output isn't a good idea as it would
wipe away the "standard" output displayed on nbviewer (
https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/zachetienne/nrpytutorial/blob/master/NRPyPlus_Tutorial.ipynb)
in case the user wants only to learn from the Jupyter documentation.

Also if in doubt, one can simply compare the thorn output from the master
Jupyter notebook with your own version. We're making it easier to redirect
all NRPy+ output to whatever directory you like, so that such diffs can be
made quickly and easily.

-Zach

*     *     *
Prof. Zachariah Etienne
Physics & Astronomy Dept.
West Virginia University
http://astro.phys.wvu.edu/zetienne/
http://blackholesathome.net
<https://blackholesathome.net>


On Mon, Nov 4, 2019 at 11:56 AM Erik Schnetter <schnetter at cct.lsu.edu>
wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 4, 2019 at 8:38 AM Zach Etienne <
> trac-noreply at einsteintoolkit.org> wrote:
>
>> #2064: Add GiRaFFE to the Einstein Toolkit
>> Reporter: Zach Etienne
>> Status: open
>> Milestone: ET_2019_10
>> Version: development version
>> Type: enhancement
>> Priority: minor
>> Component: EinsteinToolkit thorn
>>
>> Comment (by Zach Etienne):
>>
>> @Ian Hinder : Version control with Jupyter is only slightly more
>> difficult than with plain source code, as its JSON is plaintext.
>>
>> Is it a good idea to pull the whole code into notebooks? I don’t know how
>> sustainable it is when you have multiple contributors; merging changes from
>> different people can become very difficult.
>>
>> Writing the Jupyter notebook is only the first step in NRPy+ development,
>> but arguably the most important as it contains the documentation and some
>> validation checks. I’d liken the Jupyter notebook phase more to
>> collaboratively writing a journal article with a shared git repo than code
>> development within such a repo.
>>
>
> I'd like to add a point to this, out of frustration:
>
> A few weeks ago I downloaded and ran Tutorial-BaikalETK.ipynb. Today I try
> to "git pull", and it doesn't work, because there are differences in the
> output everywhere (e.g. "Finished BSSN symbolic expressions in
> 1.2987918853759766 seconds"). The only way I see is to undo my changes
> ("git checkout"), and then pull your changes. In this case that's fine
> because there are no major changes, but if I had made changes I'd be in
> trouble.
>
> I think the problem is that the output is stored in the git repo. In the
> future, you might want to switch to a system where (a) notebooks
> automatically have all output removed before they are committed, and (b)
> upon commit, Travis or a similar system creates for-viewing-only notebooks
> with a standardized output.
>
> -erik
>
>
>
>> After the notebook has been written, a separate Python module containing
>> the code developed in the Jupyter notebook is then written. At the bottom
>> of every NRPy+ Jupyter notebook it is required to include a self-validation
>> check against the separate Python module (many NRPy+ Jupyter notebooks have
>> additional validation checks). Further, all NRPy+ Python modules must
>> include proper unit testing on all symbolic expressions generated, so that
>> Travis CI can confirm agreement with the trusted version. This has the nice
>> consequence of often requiring developers to update the documentation any
>> time the module is updated in order for the Jupyter notebook to pass
>> self-validation tests, though generally NRPy+ developers prefer updating
>> the Jupyter notebooks as a first step, then propagating changes to the
>> module & unit tests. Proper documentation makes our lives much easier and
>> is the foundation of a sustainable codebase.
>>
>> The above approach has worked fine with multiple contributors so far, as
>> NRPy+ is extremely modular, with 70+ Python modules & about 100 Jupyter
>> notebooks. Also I generally don’t put multiple students on exactly the same
>> project (though they certainly do interact and benefit from each others'
>> documentation). Thus
>>
>> --
>> Ticket URL:
>> https://bitbucket.org/einsteintoolkit/tickets/issues/2064/add-giraffe-to-the-einstein-toolkit
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
>
> --
> Erik Schnetter <schnetter at cct.lsu.edu>
> http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/personal/eschnetter/
>
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