The thorn lists below provide a convenient way for choosing a configuration of Cactus for checkout and compilation. More thorn lists will be added as applications and examples are developed. Note that thorn lists for the development version of Cactus may be slightly different.

For information on using a ThornList for checking out thorns, please see the Management-HOWTO. The MakeThornList script can be used to generate a ThornList for a specific parameter file.

For more information about individual thorns, check the Thorn Information page, and the ComputationalToolKit-HOWTO.

Computational Infrastructure

The computational infrastructure thorns are designed to provide the basic utilities for any simulation, such as IO, reductions, and driver thorns.

Here we divide the infrastructure thorns up depending on the additional libraries which need to be available for compilation.

• Cactus Computational ToolKit
  This toolkit contains thorns which will work on all supported platforms, regardless of the availability of additional libraries, needing only the standard required software.

  • ComputationalToolkit.th

WaveToy Demonstration

The WaveToy set of thorns perform evolutions of a 3D scalar field. This application is one of the simplest examples of a solving a hyperbolic partial differential equation using finite differences, and so provides a very good learning example of how a PDE can be solved within the Cactus framework. Despite it's simplicity, the WaveToy example is prototypical of much more complicated systems of equations.

The WaveToy application is provided in each of the programming languages supported by Cactus. This makes the WaveToy applications a useful tool to check compilation of Cactus on your platform, especially if you do not have a Fortran 77 or Fortran 90 compiler available.

• WaveToy
  Scalar wave evolution implemented in all our supported programming languages. Use this Thorn List to check that Cactus is working properly on your platform.

  • WaveToy.th

General Relativity Applications

The Einstein Toolkit contains standard thorns for 3D evolution and analysis of the Einstein Equations using the 3+1 variables.

• Einstein Toolkit

  • EinsteinToolkit.th

Examples and Tests

These thorn lists provide further example application and test thorns, and are a good place to look for working examples of different Cactus APIs.

• Example Applications

  • Examples.th

• Test Thorns

  • TestThorns.th

The Whole Thing

If you want to checkout the code with all the thorns available from our repository, use the list below.

• AllThorns
  The whole kit and kaboodle. Note that for various reasons some thorns may not compile on all platforms, check the latest release notes for some guidance

  • AllThorns.th