Comment (by Samuel Cupp):

Right now, the PR removed them in ADMBase. They remain in HydroBase because there are many different variables using the same parameter that one may or may not need in a given run. Essentially, the ‘initial_Y_e’ and similar parameters are serving to determine whether these variables are active. However, in ADMBase the only variables with this behavior are dtshift, dtlapse, and shift. There’s definitely no need for shift to do this, as its storage is already controlled by shift_timelevels. The only question is whether we need to reintroduce the

if (! CCTK_Equals(initial_dtlapse, "none"))
{
  dtlapse[lapse_timelevels]
}
if (! CCTK_Equals(initial_dtshift, "none"))
{
  dtshift[shift_timelevels]
}

‌

--
Ticket URL: https://bitbucket.org/einsteintoolkit/tickets/issues/2735/einsteinbase-storage-declaration