ADIOS2 Open Speed and NVCC Fixes

This releases improves the initial time spend when parsing data series with the ADIOS2 backend. Compile problems when using the CUDA NVCC compiler in downstream projects have been fixed. We adopted a Code of Conduct in openPMD.

Thanks to Axel Huebl, Franz Poeschel, William F. Godoy, Ligia Diana Amorim, and Remi Lehe for contributing to this release!

ADIOS2 Preview, Python & MPI Improved

This release adds a first (preview) implementation of ADIOS2 (BP4). Python 3.8 support as well as improved pip builds on macOS and Windows have been added. ADIOS1 and HDF5 now support non-collective (independent) store and load operations with MPI. More HPC compilers, such as IBM XL, ICC and PGI have been tested. The manual has been improved with more details on APIs, examples, installation, and backends.

Thanks to Axel Huebl, Franz Poeschel, Ligia Diana Amorim, and Glenn Richardson for contributing to this release!

Improved Builds and Packages

This release improves PyPI releases with proper declaration of build dependencies (use pip 19.0+). For Makefile-based projects, an openPMD.pc file to be used with pkg-config is added on install. RecordComponent now supports a makeEmpty method to write a zero-extent, yet multi-dimensional record component. We are now building as shared library by default.

Thanks to Axel Huebl, and Franz Poeschel for contributing to this release!

Python mpi4py and Slice Support

We implemented MPI support for the Python frontend via mpi4py and added []-slice access to Record_Component loads and stores. A bug requiring write permissions for read-only series was fixed and memory provided by users is now properly checked for being contiguous. Introductory chapters in the manual have been greatly extended.

Thanks to Axel Huebl, and Fabian Koller for contributing to this release!

Bug Fixes in Multi-Platform Builds

This release fixes several issues with libstdc++ (e.g. on OSX), cross-compiles and modern compilers.

Thanks to Axel Huebl, and Ray Donnelly for contributing to this release!

JSON Support, Interface Simplification and Stability

This release introduces serial JSON (.json) support. Our API has been unified with slight breaking changes such as a new Python module name (import openpmd_api from now on) as well as re-ordered store/loadChunk argument orders.

Please see our new "upgrade guide" section in the manual on how to update existing scripts. Additionally, many little bugs have been fixed. Official Python 3.7 support and a parallel benchmark example have been added.

Thanks to Axel Huebl, Franz Poeschel, Sergei Bastrakov, and Ray Donnelly for contributing to this release!

Reading Varying Iteration Padding

Support reading series with varying iteration padding (or no padding at all) as currently used in PIConGPU.

Thanks to Axel Huebl for contributing to this release!

Relaxed Python Stride Checks

Python stride checks have been relaxed and one-element n-d arrays are allowed for scalars.

Thanks to Axel Huebl for contributing to this release!

Relaxed Python Stride Checks

Python stride checks have been relaxed and one-element n-d arrays are allowed for scalars.

Thanks to Axel Huebl for contributing to this release!

Patches, Const Scalars, Py Containers

Scalar records properly support const-ness. The Particle Patch load interface was changed, loading now all patches at once, and Python bindings are available. Numpy dtype is now a first-class citizen for Python Datatype control, being accepted and returned instead of enums. Python lifetime in garbage collection for containers such as meshes, particles and iterations is now properly implemented.

Thanks to Axel Huebl and Fabian Koller for contributing to this release!