NOX and LOCA Release Information

NOX/LOCA 4.0 is being released as part of Trilinos 5.0 on March 1st 2005.

What's new in this release:

• A new Tensor based solver that is independent of the linear solver is now implemented (in the prerelease section).
• Inexact Trust Region Techniques are fully supported (also in the prerelease section).
• Improved support for Epetra objects - The NOX::EpetraNew::Group should be used in place of the NOX::Epetra::Group. In the future we will be phasing out the NOX::Epetra::Group and replace it with NOX::EpetraNew::Group.
• A multi-physics technique for code coupling has been demonstrated in the test/epetra/Multiphysics directory. This will be expanded to a generic capability in the next year.
• The LOCA library can now be built as a shared library using libtool. See NOX Configuration Options for how to do this. Known issues with this are:
  • Extra link libraries passed using the --with-libs configure flag should use the "-Lpath -lname" format instead of "path/libname.a"
  • Building LOCA as a static library on DEC architectures using template repositories does not work. On these architectures, only build LOCA as a shared library using the --enable-shared and --disable-static configure flags, or turn off template repositories using the "-tweak" C++ compiler flag. Note that if the later method is chosen, a large number of warnings will be issued each time an executable is linked against LOCA.
  • When building shared libraries on SGI systems in 64 bit, one must supply the "-64" C++ compiler flag to not only the compiler and linker through CXXFLAGS and LDFLAGS, but also to libtool using LIBTOOL_CCLINKER_FLAGS or --with-libtool-cclinker-flags. Also one must turn off template repositories and the template prelinker using the flags "-ptused -no_prelink -no_auto_include".
  • When building shared libraries on Solaris systems, one should add "-xlic_lib=sunperf" to CFLAGS, "-library=sunperf" to CXXFLAGS and LIBTOOL_CCLINKER_FLAGS, and make sure neither of these flags appear in LDFLAGS.
• A basic, but functional python interface to NOX and LOCA now exists. See NOX Configuration Options for how to enable this. A test exhibiting this functionality can be found in the nox/test/lapack/LOCA_python directory.

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