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Changelog History
Page 3

  • v2.3.0 Changes

    November 12, 2019

    🚀 Minor release with lots of CMake updates and build changes and a few fixes and additions. The biggest change is in the C++ shared library and complete removal of boost::test.

    🔄 Changed

    • Converted the shared_library_tests and application_api tests to use Google test instead of Boost test
    • 🏗 Most HELICS CMake options have changed to HELICS_**, with the exception of BUILD_XXX_INTERFACE, and ENABLE_XXX_CORE. These options will not change until HELICS 3.0, at which point all HELICS related CMake options that are not standard CMake options will have a leading HELICS_
    • 🚀 The version string printed by HELICS will include git hash codes and base version information for non-release builds
    • Some attempts were made to further modernize the usage in CMake. This effort ended up fixing a few bugs in certain conditions and simplifying things, and the CMake code was also run through a formatter
    • The exported C++ shared library has been heavily modified to only include functions in the public API, and is now the recommended way to link with HELICS directly in a C++ program. A HELICS::helics-shared target is now available for linking through CMake. If libraries were previously linking with the installed static library this is a BREAKING Change. Those previously linking with the C++ shared library may also need modifications. Changes include:
      • The coreFactory and brokerFactory headers are deprecated as part of the public headers, they are still used internally but should not be used by linking libraries. The public version will remain stable but show deprecated messages. The internal version used by the core will likely be modified in the future.
      • New headers for CoreApp and BrokerApp can be used to provide nearly all the same capabilities in the application API.
      • New headers typeOperations.hpp and timeOperations.hpp were added to the application_api to provide string operations for the time and core types. In the shared-library core-time, and core-type headers included these headers but that will be deprecated in the future.
      • CMake options for building utilities/units/json as object libraries have been removed as they were no longer needed.
      • The cereal library is moved to the external folder in the helics directory and is now required to be available for the C++ shared library, so a CMake variable making it optional was removed.
      • The reason for this change was partly as a stepping stone for other internal library changes, and to simplify the build complexity and allow more flexibility in linking libraries without impacting the installed interfaces. The previous methods and installed libraries were coming into conflict with other packages and posing increasing challenges in maintenance and linking. This change forced more separation in the HELICS layers, and the installed libraries and simplified a lot of the build generation scripts.
    • ⚡️ CLI11, utilities, filesystem and units libraries were updated with latest revisions.

    🛠 Fixed

    • Race condition when removing subscriptions or targets from an interface
    • 🛠 Fixed mistakenly excluded tests and the resulting failures in the CI builds
    • Some of the interface functions (Python, Java, etc) were generating incorrect code for getting raw data from inputs.
    • 🛠 The language API's were not handling Ctrl-C user disconnects well, so some fixes were added to handle that situation better.

    ➕ Added

    • A set of included HELICS benchmarks using the Google benchmark library.
      • echo benchmark
      • echo message benchmark
      • ring benchmark
      • PHOLD benchmarks for single machine
      • message size and count benchmark
      • filter benchmark based on echo message benchmark
      • actionMessage benchmarks
      • data conversion benchmarks
    • 🏗 The src, test, benchmarks directory can now be used as a root directory for CMake to do the appropriate build with few options.
    • 👍 Dedicated internal functions for conversion of bool operators, strings such as "off", "false", "disabled", "inactive" are now supported as valid bool values that can be passed.
    • Shared libraries for the C++ Application api and apps library are built and installed containing only public API functions and classes. potential breaking change as the CMake library names have changed and the C++ shared library is modified
    • ✅ Tests executing and linking with the shared libraries
    • Example linking with the shared libraries
    • a build_flags_target is exported with flags that may effect compilation
    • a compile_flags_target is exported, mostly for seeing which non-abi related flags HELICS was built with.
    • a helicsXXXMakeConnections function which takes a file to establish linkages for Core and Broker to the C shared API.
    • Automated generation of interface code for Python, Matlab, and Java interfaces and automatic PR's with the changes
    • Overloads of federate creation functions in C++ for CoreApp
    • Overloads of filter creation function in C++ to use CoreApp
    • 📄 Docstrings were added using swig -doxygen to Python, Python2 and Java interfaces
    • ➕ Add "queries" query to core, federate, and broker which gets a list of available queries
    • ➕ Add "isconnected", "filters", "inputs" query to core to retrieve list of available filters and inputs, and if the core is connected.
    • ➕ Added an INPROC core type, which replaces the TEST core for most user uses, the TEST core does the same thing but has additional functionality to mock network issues for testing, more of these capabilities will be added. The INPROC core will remain simplified and as fast as possible for in process federations.
    • 🏁 Windows CI builds for visual studio 2019, 2017, 2015 on Azure, reduced workload on Appveyor.
    • 🚀 Automatic release file generation for a shared library package on macOS and Linux, and a more complete macOS installation archive. Supported versions are macOS Catalina 10.15 and Ubuntu 18.04, though the macOS binaries might work as far back as 10.11 and the Linux binary should work for older versions and different distributions.

    🗄 Deprecated

    • 🔨 Use of coreFactory and brokerFactory when using the C++ shared library (use CoreApp and BrokerApp instead)
    • 🚚 coreType and helics-time string conversion functions are no longer defined in the helics-time header. They are still there currently but are deprecated and will be removed in HELICS 3.0 use the typeOperations.hpp and timeOperations.hpp header instead which now defines those functions.

    ✂ Removed

    • 🚚 All tests using boost::test have now been replaced with Google test, so references and linking to boost::test has been removed
    • 🚚 Exporting and installing the static libraries has been removed (they can still be used by using HELICS as a CMake subproject)
    • 🚚 CMake option to exclude static libs from the install has been removed as no longer needed
    • 🏗 CMake options for building JSONCPP, Utilities, and units libraries as object libraries have been removed as object libraries are no longer being used
    • JSONCPP, Utilities, and units libraries are no longer installed in any form, libraries or headers.
    • CMake option to install CEREAL headers (they are now required, but are in a different location)

  • v2.2.2 Changes

    October 27, 2019

    [2.2.2] ~ 2019-10-27

    🐛 Bug fix release for a timeout regression from 2.2.1,

    🛠 Fixed

    • 🔗 Links in the README changed with an automated move to travis-ci.com
    • 🛠 Fix issue #853, which was causing core connections to timeout if no direct communication was observed for a period of time. This bug fix release fixes that issue where the pings were not being correctly accounted for in the timeout detection.
    • 🛠 Fix Ctrl-C issue when using HELICS in some language api's (Python and Julia) others may be added in 2.3

  • v2.2.1 Changes

    September 27, 2019

    🚀 Minor release with bug fixes and a few additional features

    🔄 Changed

    • ✅ helics apps tests is converted to use Google test and is now being run through the sanitizers
    • 💥 BREAKING CHANGE The C interface helics logging callback specifications now include a user data object. This is technically a breaking change, but there were a few issues with the current implementation so it is not entirely clear it was usable as it was. There are now some tests for the functionality. This log callback specification was not available in the language API's and the C++ API has not changed, only the C interface to specifying direct logging callbacks. This is considered a minor change due to no known users of this interface at present and as it was it wasn't entirely operational. No further changes are expected.
    • The use of Boost C++ in the helics core and application api are now limited to the IPC core(there are no plans to remove this usage) and an option to DISABLE_BOOST is available in the CMAKE files. This will turn off the IPC_CORE and any optional uses of boost in some of the libraries. Future features may use Boost but should retain the ability to disable its use.
    • 💥 BREAKING CHANGE Some function names in the C++98 API were changed to better match the C++ API and were documented more completely through doxygen, these were listed as potentially changing in the Public API so this is not a consideration for semantic versioning. The C++98 API also has limited numbers of users at this point yet and may not be fully stable until HELICS 3.0 release
    • The doxygen CMake project was renamed from doc to helics_doxygen
    • several variables used by submodules in CMake were hidden
    • ⚡️ updated zmq subproject version to 4.3.2

    🛠 Fixed

    • ✅ There was a 32 bit issue when using certain vector operation functions in HELICS when compiled with 32 bit, this was preventing the arm 32 from running the tests fully. This issue has been fixed.
    • 🛠 Fixed a race condition related to queries of subscriptions and inputs of a federate if done remotely. The core could lock or a race condition could occur.
    • 🔊 some issues related to file logs
    • started to address some recommendations for include-what-you-use
    • 🏗 The CMake conditions for building the C# interface and Python2 interface were not completely correct and incorrectly showed an error which was also incorrectly ignored, so it all worked unless there was an actual error, but those issues have been resolved.

    ➕ Added

    • 🌲 logMessage functions in the federate for user specified log messages and levels
      • logDebugMessage, logWarningMessage, logErrorMessage, logInfoMessage function in all API's to simplify common logging operations
    • 🌲 function to set the log file from the core C++ API
    • A CMAKE option to disable BOOST entirely DISABLE_BOOST
    • A CMAKE option HELICS_BINARY_ONLY_INSTALL which will restrict the install to executables and shared libraries with no headers or static libraries.
    • 👍 Some CMAKE capabilities to better generate the interface files.
    • Timeouts on the broker for broker connections, more work is likely needed in the future but for now if a path times out, if things were already disconnecting it assumes it is the equivalent of a disconnect, and if not the federation errors and terminates.
    • 🚀 Automatic release file generation for visual studio builds, windows installers, full source code tar files, and a shared library package.

    ✂ Removed

    • 🚀 The included build files for the Octave interface have been removed. It is now required to use swig to build these files. The interface file was only valid for Octave 4.2 and had potential to break in later versions. Given the 3 versions of octave in common use it was deemed prudent to just remove the included file and require swig to generate the correct interface, this may be added back in the next release if more testing shows this to not be an issue.

  • v2.2.0 Changes

    August 26, 2019

    🚀 Minor release with some updates to the networking portion of HELICS and some API additions.

    🔄 Changed

    • ⚡️ Submodule updates for filesystem, libfmt, and google test
    • A utilities lib containing many string processing and small functions is now used instead of directly including it.

    🛠 Fixed

    • ⏱ A error response to a core registration will immediately generate an error on federates waiting for registration instead of waiting for a timeout
    • 🏁 HELICS can now compile with standalone mingw and cygwin 32 bit on Windows. ASIO is not compatible with Cygwin 64 bit so no support for that is expected in the near future. Tests in travis exercise the MinGW build.
    • 🏗 Some issues with the ZMQ core generating an error on close due to incorrect builds of ZMQ in some installations.
    • Some changes to the network interface selection process that cause issues on certain platforms.

    ➕ Added

    • The ability to specify a broker key for brokers and cores to limit linking to those cores with the appropriate key
    • A units library into HELICS, mismatched units are checked and units published as a double with units on the publication and subscription converted internally
    • 🚀 A new API for messages in the C interface. The old interface has difficulties when working with binary data in the message structure. So a message object API was created with appropriate methods to access the data. The previous message API will be deprecated in release 2.3 and removed in 3.0.
    • 👯 A clone app for cloning an existing federate including all publications and subscriptions and all data that is being sent out. It is accessible through the helics_app clone subcommand
    • 🐳 CI tests using docker for clang memory sanitizer and the octave interface.
    • 🚀 Scripts for generating a single zip file with all the code including submodules. This will be generated for each new release.
    • 👍 A broker server that generate multiple brokers on a single system and handles the port allocation intelligently. (Only ZMQ currently supported, this is not backwards compatible, though regular 2.2 brokers should work with 2.1 federates if needed.)
    • 🚀 A Docker image containing the HELICS apps (available on Docker Hub for tagged releases and the latest develop branch at https://hub.docker.com/r/helics/helics)

    ✂ Removed

    • 🏗 ENABLE_SWIG option in CMake as always ON. This option will only appear for interfaces that have existing build files. For swig generated interfaces that do not have prebuilt files (octave, python2, and C#) this option will no longer appear as swig is required.

  • v2.1.1 Changes

    July 15, 2019

    🚀 Minor release which fixes a few bugs and add some JSON related input and queries

    🔄 Changed

    • 🚚 moved concurrency related structures to a standalone library
    • ✅ System-tests is now based on google test instead of boost test
    • Shared_libary_cpp tests now based on google_test instead of boost test
    • the deserializer for ActionMessage now uses memcpy to avoid possible undefined behavior
    • The value of helics_time_maxtime has been changed for consistency with the C++ equivalent
    • 📜 The return type of the helicsCLI11App is now named parse_output instead of parse_return
    • ⚡️ fmt and googletest were updated to latest version

    🛠 Fixed

    • a few possible race conditions found by thread-sanitizer
    • ✅ cleared up a couple scenarios that were triggering occasional test failure in the system tests
    • helics_broker and helics_app were returning non-zero return values when --version or --help were used, they now return 0 in those cases
    • 🏗 a small memory leak when a JSON stream builder was created and not destroyed properly
    • an inconsistency between the helics_time_maxtime in the C shared library and the maxTime value used in C++, this could in some cases result in failing termination conditions

    ➕ Added

    • queries for getting all current inputs in JSON format.
    • ⚡️ query for getting all updated inputs in JSON format
    • publication function that accepts a JSON structure for multiple publications
    • registration function that generates publications based on same JSON structure as the function that accepts JSON for group publication
    • ⚡️ function on the inputs to clear the updates, is used from a query
    • ⚡️ a const version of the isUpdated function call on inputs
    • Shared OBJECT (SO) versions to the shared libraries

    ✂ Removed

    • libguarded and several concurrency related structures as they are now in a standalone repository that is included through submodules

  • v2.1.0 Changes

    June 27, 2019

    🚀 The main focus of this minor release is cleaning up the build system and extracting required compiled libraries from the HELICS build process, no changes in the C API, and a few additions and deprecations in the C++ API related to command line arguments.

    🔄 Changed

    • ✂ remove use of boost::program options and replace usage with CLI11
    • ✂ remove boost::asio and replace with a submodule for ASIO
    • ✂ remove included fmt code and replace with submodule
    • ✂ remove JsonCpp code and replace with a submodule which generates a compiled library - this removed the need to continually regenerate the single header/file with customized namespaces, though if you are using the helics-static library built with a separate JsonCpp static library, the HELICS copy of the jsoncpp static library must be linked with manually (for build systems other than CMake such as waf, meson, premake, etc). Also included is an option to incorporate JsonCpp as an object library within a single helics-static library (default on macOS/Linux), and create a target HELICS::jsoncpp_headers.
    • 🚧 extract several containers used in HELICS to a separate repository for better maintenance and possible reuse elsewhere. Any reference to the containers library was removed from the Public API.
    • 🚚 all required references to boost were removed from the public API.
    • the logger headers were split into two sections. The logger.h which includes the logger objects for use in federates was split from the loggerCore which is not publicly accessible.
    • 🖨 The command line arguments are error checked and the help prints all available options (thanks to CLI11)
    • ✅ the core tests and common tests now use google test instead of boost test. More tests are expected to be migrated in the future.
    • ⚡️ updates to the HELICSConfig.cmake file that gets installed to be more resilient to different directory structures.
    • use ZMQ as a subproject if needed instead of an autobuild and install it as a target if needed. The CMake option to enable this is ZMQ_SUBPROJECT, replacing AUTOBUILD_ZMQ.
    • the cereal library is not installed by default except on visual studio, and there is a CMAKE option to install it HELICS_INSTALL_CEREAL
    • ⚡️ some update to the noexcept policy on c++98 interface

    🛠 Fixed

    • ⚡️ an issue with the isUpdated function not registering access (mainly an issue in the C and language interfaces), Issue #655
    • certain flags when used with certain brokers could cause errors, Issue #634
    • certain flags when used with certain brokers could cause errors Issue #634
    • ⚡️ potential issue with only_update_on_change_flag when used at the federate level, along with some tests

    ➕ Added

    • the HELICS library can now operate as a subproject in a larger CMake project if needed
    • ✅ tcp cores have a --reuse-address flag to allow multiple brokers on the same port, mostly useful for the test suite to prevent spurious failures due to the OS not releasing tcp ports in a timely manner.
    • 💻 several C++ api functions for using a vector of strings as command line arguments, in the federates and in the broker/core factory, this is related to the transition to CLI11
    • 🏗 tests for building HELICS with musl instead of glibc
    • 🏗 tests for building HELICS on ARM/ARM64

    ✂ Removed

    • ✅ tested support of XCode 6.4 and 7.3; these probably still work but we are not testing them anymore.

  • v2.0.0 Changes

    February 12, 2019

    This is a major revision so this changelog will not capture all the changes that have been made in detail. Some highlights:

    • major revision to the API including
      • use of an error object in the C api function instead of a return code.
      • better match the C++ api in terms of function names and layers.
      • The C++ api now uses objects for the interfaces instead of identification ids.
    • Filters can have multiple Targets
    • Define an input object which can be addressed from outside the federate
    • ➕ add a ZMQ_SS core type useful for large numbers of federates on a single machine.
    • ➕ add a TCP_SS socket for firewall usage though it may be applicable in other situations
    • 🔨 numerous bug fixes and internal refactorings.
    • ➕ add target functions to the interface objects to add and remove targets
    • functions to allow cores and brokers to add links between federates
    • an octave interface
    • an early version of the C# interface.
    • an ability to set a global value (as a string) that can be queried.
    • a local info field for all the interfaces for user defined string data.
    • many other small changes.
    • License file changed to match BSD-3-clause exactly(terms are the same but the file had some extra disclaimers in it, now it matches the standard BSD-3-clause license)
    • 🏷 tag source files with appropriate licensing information

  • v1.3.1 Changes

    September 23, 2018

    🔄 Changed

    • wait_for_Broker now uses a condition variable instead of sleep and checking repeatedly
    • 🔄 changed the logging levels to be error, warning, summary, connections, interfaces, timing, data, and trace to better match debugging levels used in development and make the purpose of each level clearer
    • 🌲 comm objects now can use the same logging system as the rest of HELICS

    🛠 Fixed

    • ✅ some race conditions in a few test cases and in user disconnection calls for brokers
    • certain types of federates would occasionally hang during off nominal shutdown call sequences. Fixing this led to a substantial rewrite of the tcp comms

    ➕ Added

    • federate, broker, and core destroy functions to the C api
    • ✅ tcp cores have a --reuse-address flag to allow multiple brokers on the same port, mostly useful for the test suite to prevent spurious failures due to the OS not releasing tcp ports in a timely manner.

  • v1.3.0 Changes

    July 31, 2018

    🔄 Changed

    • 🏗 some CMake options have been removed (BUILD_BROKER)
    • 🏗 major changes to the build of the CTest testing Framework
    • 🚚 moved most examples to new HELICS-Examples Repo
    • ➕ added better code for allowing static runtime builds
    • 👉 use the CMake version numbers instead of independent variables
    • ✅ Environment variables are recognized in CMAKE find options- split API tests from system wide tests
    • ➕ added options on MSVC to build with embedded system libraries and embedded debug info.

    🛠 Fixed

    • 🆓 potential segmentation fault in C shared library when calling free with invalid object.
    • 🏗 autobuild recognizes build configuration

    ➕ Added

    • 🐧 working octave interface for Linux
    • ✅ some additional tests for the shared library
    • TOML readers for interface description in Federates
    • 💻 interactive command line for helics_broker
    • 👀 a few new queries on brokers see [Queries](docs/user_guide/Queries.md)
    • 🏗 CPACK can now build a dmg files
    • Players can have multiline comments in input file and omit the tag for repeated messages
    • 🖨 marker option on player, recorder, tracer to print time advancement message

    ✂ Removed

  • v1.2.1 Changes

    June 30, 2018

    🛠 Fixed

    • 🐛 bug in the conversion of named points from strings
    • 🛠 MATLAB helicsSubscriptionGetVector function was producing a segmentation fault, now this is fixed
    • 🐎 performance issue in the delay buffers of federateState
    • findMPI for MPI libraries with multiple libraries
    • federates will now error on missing required publications

    ➕ Added

    • ✅ first cut of MATLAB interface tests
    • ✅ some additional Java test cases
    • ✅ Python test cases for named point and bool tests
    • MATLAB helper scripts for loading the library
    • String length function for subscriptions

    🔄 Changed

    • conversion of doubles into the internal time base now rounds to the nearest ns instead of truncating
    • unify CMake scripts to use lower case commands