[Developers] Changing the output directory at run time

[Thomas Radke]

Bela Szilagyi wrote:
> I am always in favor of steerability.
> 
> Question: would non-ASCII output files be closed in case the output file path 
> changes between two IO iterations?  If not, adding this feature could be 
> useful.

Making IO::out_dir fully steerable is certainly doable but - for 
consistency - requires changes in all I/O thorns which share this I/O 
parameter. I'd rather limit necessary changes to individual thorns for 
now, making their own output/checkpoint directory parameters steerable. 
One could start with CarpetIOHDF5 and CarpetIOASCII.

Before implementing anything we should clearly define what should happen 
when switching to a different output directory. HDF5 files will surely 
be created anew. What about existing ASCII output files, should they 
also be split or appended in the old outdir ? Would it suffice to make 
the checkpoint directory steerable ?

-- 
Cheers, Thomas.


> On Saturday 07 April 2007 12:40, Erik Schnetter wrote:
> 
>>I notice that IO::out_dir is marked "STEERABLE=recover".  Could this
>>be changed to "STEERABLE=always"?  This would make it possible to
>>change the output directory while a job is running.  This could be
>>used to divert output from an almost-full to a less full file system.
>>
>>-erik
> 
>