[Users] Meeting minutes for 2026-07-16

[Deborah Ferguson]

Present: Roland, Deborah, Steve, Lucas, Peter, Beyhan, Maxwell, Jordan, Noora, Yosef, Zach

Chair: Peter

Minute taker: Deborah



Minutes:

New ETK release done!
Kuibit release wrong on download page
will be fixed
Bitbucket issues
Zach been working on figuring out what exactly needs to be done to convert over to github with the help of clankers
has simplified the process greatly into just a few steps
some trickiness about mapping bitbucket users to github users
maybe just list the bitbucket user
maybe just email address if that’s possible
clankers didn’t have a plan for handling users yet
was just going to do names in plain text
Zach has changed this to make a user map between bitbucket and github users
Accumulated updates after the release
CarpetX / AMReX
there will be a breaking change to CarpetX which we wanted to do early in the release cycle
McLachlan
updates being brought back into focus
Mailing list questions
Jordan about using GetComponents
can it be used to update everything to the newest release?
Roland: the script doesn’t change branches so GetComponents can’t switch you to a new release
typically just create a new Cactus directory with the new release
Steve: it’s a feature we could add, in principle, if there is interest
Jordan about bug in CarpetRegrid2
has opened a ticket
Question about IllinoisGRMHD C2P failure and Psi4 extraction
Psi4 aspect has been answered
still waiting for help about IllinoisGRMHD part
it’s crashing immediately
getting nans
Zach: in IllinoisGRMHD itself, where that error message appears, give some helpful tips about how to go about debugging
turn on poisoning
likely an issue of feeding in some data but not all the data that illinois GRMHD needs
will reply to the email
Open tickets
Test Derivs fails on stampede with NaNs
Steve reproduced the bug but with the help of clankers may have found a solution
Needs more eyes
Split the ET
right now we have a giant thornlist with basically two sets of thorns (Carpet and CarpetX)
could split up the Carpet and the CarpetX thornlists
could help with code duplication
comes with some tradeoffs
Noora
encountering an issue with compiling
when compiling, it was pulling the Carpet versions instead of the CarpetX versions
some of the thorns aren’t part of the current ETK release
Maxwell
what about splitting them but keeping the name differences?
Steve
if we get rid of the X in some names, then things like TwoPunctures don’t have to be duplicated
Lucas
which thorns can be made compatible across drivers?
twopunctures seems like an exception
at some point, we’re probably going to have a breaking change
Roland
we can make some level of compatibility with just a little bit of performance loss
Steve
went through with the help of AI to see what thorns would be easy to make compatible with both
Yosef
development and code maintenance is mostly a volunteer effort
deprecate Carpet once CarpetX can replicate all science
proposes that long term compatibility doesn’t need to be an overarching goal
Steve
agrees that we will have to move on and abandon code eventually
needs further discussion
Zach
solving many of these issues could be done by formalizing Roland’s tool that creates a thornlist from the parameter files
more informative error messages would be useful as well
Jordan
can someone explain the difference between Carpet and CarpetX?
Lucas and Zach: it’s very nontrivial. loops are different for example. ccl files differ a bit
Zach: much easier with clankers
Yosef
which thorns are actually compatible with both
Steve: shared a markdown file with that
Roland: only a few things, like Time
his impression is that there’s just a handful of thorns that are the same and most things are different
treats them as entirely different codes
Peter
what’s the timescale for actually getting CarpetX to the point of replacing Carpet for production runs
let’s discuss this further in future meetings
AOB
Steve
made a few updates to the ETK tutorial server
should run more smoothly now
-----------------------------------------
Deborah Ferguson
Assistant Professor
The University of Rhode Island

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