Changes between Version 3.3 and 3.4

This is the list of changes made between the deal.II releases listed above. All entries are signed with the names of the author.

General

1. Deprecated: The functions FEValuesBase::get_shape_values, FEValuesBase::get_shape_grads, and FEValuesBase::get_shape_2nd_derivatives are now deprecated as they expose too much of the internal data structure of their class, and interfere with plans for the extension of this and related classes. The functions still exist in this release of the library, but will be removed in the next version. Use the FEValuesBase::shape_value and alike functions as a replacement.
   For more information, read this mail.
   (WB 2002/06/03)

2. Added: The configure script now recognizes Intel's ECC compiler when run on Itanium systems with this compiler present. The ECC compiler is similar to the ICC compiler but it accepts some different options.
   (BK 2002/05/22)

3. New: The step-14 example program demonstrates duality based error estimators and some more software design concepts.
   (WB 2002/05/05)

4. New: In all previous versions, deal.II used the ACE (Adaptive Communications Environment) library to support cross-platform threading facilities. While this is still supported, the default way is now to use the POSIX threading functions that are available on many systems. The relieves you from the need of installing a huge library of which the most part is not used anyway. However, if you use ACE for other reasons, then it is still supported. For installation instructions, see the ReadMe file.
   (WB 2002/04/30)

5. Changed: The Makefiles for the library are now truly parallel. To this end, the automatic generation of the files forward_declarations.h in the various directories had to be changed. They will now be generated automatically at the end of the targets all, debug and optimized. They will not be generated while building a single library. In this case, make forward can be used to build them manually.
   I introduced separate targets for the generation of the optimized versions only.
   (GK 2002/04/17)

6. New: The step-13 example program tells you something about software design things for finite element programs.
   (WB 2002/04/16)

7. Changed: Due to problems with undeclared functions and general compatibility concerns, -ansi is now no more part of the compile flags for gcc.
   (WB 2002/04/16)

8. Fixed: Explicit specializations of member templates are now conforming to the C++ standard. While most compilers accepted the previous form, Sun's Forte compiler wants a strictly conforming one.
   (WB 2002/03/25)

9. Fixed: For gcc versions that used ostrstream instead of ostringstream, it was necessary to append a final std::ends when piping text into the string stream. This was not previously conditionalized, but done for old and new classes.
   (WB 2002/03/13)

10. Changed: The configure machinery has been revamped significantly.
    (WB 2002/03/08)

11. Added: The top-level Makefile now supports "optimized" as a target that builds only optimized versions of the base, lac, 1d, 2d, and 3d libraries.
    (BK 2002/02/19)

12. Changed: The build system was entirely revised. Object files in debug mode now have the suffix .g.o instead of .go. All object files from the subdirectories are now placed into the /lib top-level directory, rather than in library directories in the individual subdirs.
    (WB 2002/02/11)

base

1. New: The vector2d row accessor classes now have member functions begin and end which allow iterating over the elements of a row of such an object.
   (WB 2002/05/30)

2. New: The Legendre and LagrangeEquidistant classes now have static member functions generate_complete_basis which returns an array of polynomial objects spanning the complete space up to a specified order in 1d. This may be used to generate the respective polynomial spaces in higher space dimensions.
   (WB 2002/05/27)

3. Changed: The Polynomial and LagrangeEquidistant classes have lost their default constructor, as that did not make much sense anyway.
   (WB 2002/05/27)

4. Fixed: When forward declaring the Tensor class, we now also forward declare its partial specialization for a rank one tensor. Not doing so confused Sun's Forte compiler.
   (WB 2002/03/22)

5. Fixed: The class TensorFunction now uses local types value_type and gradient_type as return values of its member functions. This works around a bug in Sun's Forte C++ compilers.
   (WB 2002/03/20)

6. Improved: The AssertThrow macro now uses __builtin_expect if the compiler supports this. This indicates to the compiler that we expect the condition to be true and that throwing an exception is a rare case. By this information, the compiler can help the branch prediction unit of modern processors to better predict which direction a branch will take.
   (WB 2002/03/13)

7. New: The vector2d class now not only allows access to elements through the operator()(unsingned int,unsigned int) (i.e. matrix or Fortran style access), but also through nested brackets via an operator[] (i.e. like to a two-dimensional C-style array).
   (WB 2002/03/08)

8. Changed: The function MultithreadInfo:: get_n_cpus now reports the proper number of CPUs when running on Silicon Graphics.
   (BK 2002/02/19)

9. Changed: The quite logorrhoeic function name TensorProductPolynomials::n_tensor_product_polynomials was changed to n to be compliant with the new class PolynomialSpace.
   (GK 2002/02/11)

10. New: The class PolynomialSpace implements the space of polynomials at most a certain degree in arbitrary space dimensions.
    (GK 2002/02/11)

11. New: The function DataOutBase:: write_tecplot_binary has been added. This function will write Tecplot binary files if the Tecplot API is detected by ./configure. To use this feature be sure that the environment variable TECHOME points to a valid Tecplot installation and that the files \(TECHOME/include/TECIO.h and \)TECHOME/lib/tecio.a exist. The name of the file to be written is specified through the DataOutBase ::TecplotFlags. tecplot_binary_file_name variable. If the API is not available this code simply calls the existing ASCII output function.
    (BK 2002/02/11)

lac

1. Improved: SolverGMRES allocates basis vectors only, when they are needed. Therefore, it is safe now to ask for a basis larger than the expected number of iteration steps. On the other hand, memory allocation failures may occur during the iteration now.
   (GK 2002/05/24)

2. New: Function SparsityPattern::matrix_position is the inverse function for SparsityPattern::operator().
   (WB 2002/02/13)

3. New: Functions SparsityPattern::copy_from and SparseMatrix::copy_from allow to copy a full matrix into a sparse matrix.
   (WB 2002/02/06)

deal.II

1. New: The GeometryInfo class now provides two methods, unit_cell_vertex and vertices_adjacent_to_line, that reveal something about the placement and numbering of vertices on the uni cell.
   (GK 2002/05/29)

2. New: The GridOut:: write_dx function is now implemented. It allows to write the mesh (cells and faces) with some additional information that may be useful once in a while.
   (GK 2002/05/02)

3. Fixed: The IteratorState::IteratorState enum is now called IteratorState::IteratorStates. This works around a bug in Sun's Forte C++ compilers which can't handle members of namespaces with the same name as the enclosing namespace.
   (WB 2002/03/20)

4. Fixed: In 3d, the function DoFTools::make_hanging_node_constraints contained an assertion that failed erroneously for finite elements that do not have degrees of freedom on vertices. This is now fixed.
   (WB 2002/02/21)

5. Fixed: TriaAccessor<3,3>::measure sometimes computed a negative value. This is now fixed.
   (WB 2002/02/21)

6. New: Finite element family with complete polynomial spaces for discontinuous Galerkin: FE_DGP
   (GK 2002/02/11)