Questions

Alamo is a research code that is maintained by a small band of developers consisting of graduate students, a PI, and our collaborators. While we are happy to provide help and support current (and future) collaborators, we have limited resources and cannot provide comprehensive support. Therefore, we ask that all contributors stick to these guidelines when requesting help.

Where to ask for help

1. Submit an issue on GitHub. This is the preferred method as it allows us to track issues in a systematic way.

2. Send a message on Slack. If you are a developer and would like access to the alamodevelopers please let us know by email.

3. Send an email to brunnels@iastate.edu.

Submitting a help request

If you are running into issues with the code, please use the following guidelines when submitting your help request. Remember to send all the information needed in order to exactly reproduce the error that you are getting.

Every help request should come with complete, comprehensive, step-by-step instructions on how to exactly reproduce your issue.

1. Send all the information that is unique to your system. This includes the following:

• System configuration What version of linux are you using, is this a laptop, virtual machine, etc. Have you installed all the necessary dependencies?

• Alamo clone information Were you able to clone Alamo successfully? If not: please send the exact command that you used to try to clone Alamo, along with the complete, exact output that you received.

• Alamo branch Make sure that your local copy of Alamo is consistent with a branch on GitHub.

2. Send the complete configure script output: this includes

   • ./configure command - this is the exact command that you used to run the configure script, e.g.

     ./configure --dim=2 --debug
     

   • ./configure output - this is the entire output of your configure command, e.g.

     Python              3.8
     Current Branch      development
     Current Hash        b09f26ee5661fcd47d0f76e6ca00f4b5c1e276c4
     Dimension           3
     Debug Mode          False
     OpenMP              False
     ...
     ...
     

     Terminal screenshots are OK but searchable text is preferred. The configure script is designed to include a lot of diagnostic information.

     ALWAYS submit your configure script output!

3. Send your make command and the exact output of your make command.

   Note that you can pipe the output of your make command to a file (myfile.txt) by

   make > myfile.txt
   

   or

   make | tee myfile.txt
   

   if you want to have the output go both to your terminal and to the file. (This works for any terminal output.)

4. Send run information. This includes:

   • The exact input file that you are using. If the input file is stored in the repository (this is preferred), then just make sure that the repository is up to Otherwise, you should send your exact input file along with the help request.

   • The exact command that you are using. For instance,

     mpirun -np 2 ./bin/alamo-2d-g++ myinputfile
     

5. Summarize expected results vs your current results. Are you just trying to get alamo to compile? Are you trying to develop a new capability? Are you trying to create a new regression test? Are you trying to reproduce a result from a paper? The more context you can give - even if you are a current member - will expedite the request for help.

6. Summarize what you have tried. Do not expect anyone to help you if you have not made an honest effort to solve the problem yourself. You should have a complete summary of everything you have tried before requesting personalized help.