[mpas-developers] Provenance in output files

[Doug Jacobsen]

Hi Everyone,

I spent part of this morning trying to add some provenance information to
the output files that MPAS creates. Currently I have it adding model name,
core name, and a version string to each output file, and adding the command
that was used to run the model to the history attribute.

You can preview the changes in the following branch.
branches/history_attribute

The current way to define this information is to modify Registry.xml with
the following syntax.
<registry model="mpas" core="core_name" version="version_string">
...
</registry>

Then when the model is built, there are parameters created in
src/framework/mpas_constants.F named
modelName
coreName
version
history

History is read in from the input grid upon runtime, and written to all
output files with the additional information describing how MPAS was run.
Currently it's hard coded to be "mpirun -n ${PROCS} ${CORE}_model.exe"
since we require MPI at build time.

If the model, core, and version strings are missing from Registry.xml
currently it replaces their values with "MISSING", and writes those to the
output files so there is no negative consequences.

I've tested this branch with the ocean model and it doesn't change results
in the current trunk. I also tested building with the shallow water core,
when the Registry.xml information is missing.

I would like to merge this branch back onto the trunk within the next few
days unless anyone has any objections, as I think this additional
information will be important to have in the future.

Any comments/questions are welcome.

Thanks
Doug
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