I wanted to test ArrayHandleCounting with some non-standard data type.
I was using a class that looked like a number that counts by two, but
the operator behavior was not a proper group and that was causing issues.
Replaced that with a class that inefficiently represents an unsigned
integer as a string with that many characters. The inefficiency does not
matter because it is just a test.
It appears that when the Intel compiler is optimizing, constant floating
point values can be slightly different than the same value stored in memory
and never changed. This change uses the test_equal method to compare
these floating point values that might have a slight numeric error.
Although we cannot expect every developer to have pyexpander, for those
that do the build will automatically run it and check the expanded file
in the source code. If they match, a descriptive error is given.
We don't automatically update the file because subtle problems might
occur. It is better to alert a developer to fix the problem properly.
This commit removes the usage of the boost preprocessor library to
iteratively generate templates with a variable number of parameters. It
is replaced with a template that is expanded by running it through the
pyexpander macro processing tool (http://pyexpander.sourceforge.net).
One reason for this change is to make the code easier to read. In
particular, it is difficult to understand compiler errors when they
occur deep within an iterating macro. Another reason for this change is
that the Intel compiler currently has a bug that breaks with the boost
preprocessor library.
One issue with this approach is that the macro expansion is not part of
the build process. Although open, pyexpander is not a tool most
developers will have readily installed on their system. Thus, if you
want to make changes to any of the macro code, you have to make sure
pyexpander is installed, then make changes to the input files, then
manually run pyexpander from the command line.
After a talk with Robert Maynard, we decided to change the name
ArrayContainerControl to Storage. There are several reasons for this
change.
1. The name ArrayContainerControl is unwieldy. It is long, hard for
humans to parse, and makes for long lines and wraparound. It is also
hard to distinguish from other names like ArrayHandleFoo and
ArrayExecutionManager.
2. The word container is getting overloaded. For example, there is a
SimplePolymorphicContainer. Container is being used for an object that
literally acts like a container for data. This class really manages
data.
3. The data does not necessarily have to be on the control side.
Implicit containers store the data nowhere. Derivative containers might
have all the real data on the execution side. It is possible in the
future to have storage on the execution environment instead of the
control (think interfacing with a simulator on the GPU).
Storage is not a perfect word (what does implicit storage really mean?),
but its the best English word we came up with.
It was originally put there to support CopyInto in ArrayHandle, but that
has already been removed. It really only makes sense for trivial
examples and testing code, and it sometimes causes complications with
coding.
There is a special version of the testing methods for use in the control
environment that handles execeptions that can be thrown there. There are
tests to make sure you are using the correct version of the testing
framework, but it was broken until the last commit. Now that it's fixed,
here are two places where the wrong testing method was used.
We made this change a while ago to help with completion in IDEs.
(Completion was matching a bunch of wrapper macros that were almost
never used anywhere.) Most of the changes are in comments, but there are
a few bad macro definitions.
Whenever creating a functor to be launched in the execution environment
using the device adapter Schedule algorithm, you had to also create a
couple of methods to handle error message buffers. For convenience, lots
of code started to just inherit from WorkletBase. Although this worked,
it was a misnomer (and might cause problems in the future if worklets
later require different things from its base). To get around this
problem, add a FunctorBase class that is intended to be used as the
superclass to functors called with Schedule.
Previously, VTKM_DEVICE_ADAPTER_UNDEFINED and
VTKM_ARRAY_CONTAINER_CONTROL_UNDEFINED were set to 0. The problem is
that if someone set VTKM_DEVICE_ADAPTER or VTKM_ARRAY_CONTAINER_CONTROL
to something invalid, that would test positive when compared to 0. Thus,
you get an error about not defining the default when in fact the problem
is setting an invalid flag.
This change makes the undefined constants -1 so that the comparison will
fail unless the macro is actually properly set.
Getting the type right for ArrayHandleCompositeVector can be a bit
tricky. It is expressed in a somewhat strange function signature format
and you have to extract the right component type for the return. This
adds an ArrayHandleCompositeVectorType that makes it easier (although no
less verbose).
Using alignment on basic types when vtkm only targetted Linux/BSD/OSX was
'okay' because of how the alignment operators worked, but potential was going
to cause issues in the long run if we failed to detect the correct size and the
compiler was than forced to not use intrinsics.
Now with adding windows support we have run into another problem. Basically
using an alignment operator on a typedef means that the type must never
be passed by value, but must always be passed by reference. The reason for
this is that passing by value doesn't respect alignment requirements, and
can cause very subtle errors or crashes.
A really good read for people more interested in these problems:
http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/group__TopicPassingByValue.htmlhttp://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox-devel/group__DenseMatrixManipulation__Alignement.html
Each type of point coordinates has its own class with the name
PointCoordinates*. Currently there is a PointCoordiantesArray that contains
an ArrayHandle holding the point coordinates and a PointCoordinatesUniform
that takes the standard extent, origin, and spacing for a uniform rectilinear
grid and defines point coordiantes for that. Creating new PointCoordinates
arrays is pretty easy, and we will almost definitely add more. For example,
we should have an elevation version that takes uniform coordinates for
a 2D grid and then an elevation in the third dimension. We can probably
also use a basic composite point coordinates that can build them from
other coordinates.
There is also a DynamicPointCoordinates class that polymorphically stores
an instance of a PointCoordinates class. It has a CastAndCall method that
behaves like DynamicArrayHandle; it can call a functor with an array handle
(possible implicit) that holds the point coordinates.