XBeach Blog

Today we released a new version of XBeach!

You can download pre-build executables from the download page or build your own be referring to the following Subversion tag:

https://svn.oss.deltares.nl/repos/xbeach/tags/2012-04-06-XBeach-V19-easter

The last release is from July 14th 2010 (Quatorze Juillet) and a lot has changed since then. This release (Easter) is more robust, has a variety of new functionalities like curvilinear grids and netcdf output and has an increased applicability, e.g. ship waves.

Many default settings are changed with respect to Quatorze Juillet to make this version easier applicable to most situations. From the skillbed reports, that are supplied both with custom and default settings, we know that default settings perform well in most situations. We therefore recommend a modest use of model specific parameters: start of with a minimum params.txt file!

The Easter release will not be developed any further from now on. Only critical updates may be supplied via the following Subversion branch:

https://svn.oss.deltares.nl/repos/xbeach/branches/2012-04-06-XBeach-V19-easter

Of course development of the XBeach trunk version will de continued as always, since the Easter release is not perfect as well. See the release notes and issue tracker for known issues.

In summary, the Easter release differs from the Quatorze Juillet version in many ways of which the most important are:

• Usability
  • Curvilinear grids
  • Input grid and depth from Delft3D
  • Netcdf output
  • Visualization by Quickplot
  • Much improved Matlab toolbox under OpenEarthTools
• Waves
  • Bed friction in short wave propagation
  • Ship waves
  • Beach Wizard
  • Second order upwind short wave propagation
  • Refraction problem with large wave angles solved (no more negative longshore currents)
  • Superfast 1D using only 1 grid row for profile models
  • Daly et al. (2011) breaking model
  • Stationary mode optimized: much faster
• Flow
  • Offshore boundary condition (epsi=-1 default) more robust w.r.t. mean flow effects
  • Snellius refraction in case of only one directional bin
• Sediment
  • Avalanching for multiple sediment fractions
• Informatics
  • Restructured directories and solution files
  • Updated default settings
  • Numerous bug fixes

Happy modeling!

XBeach Team

Today, we unexpectedly started an issue tracker for XBeach. You can find it here:

http://oss.deltares.nl/web/xbeach/issue-tracker/

At this moment, the issue tracker is not yet connected to the OSS login, so you can only login using the guest account (both username and password are "guest"). Any posts are therefore not yet attached to a specific user. Please be so kind to mention your name in any posts.

We will most likely use the issue tracker as todo list, rather than fully functional planning tool. Any comments on issues containing additional debugging results or other information that might be valuable is certainly appreciated. Of course, you are encouraged to post full patches that we can immediately commit to the trunk. Please add information on any tests you performed to be sure your patch does not break anything (we are working on a test environment, but that's not ready yet)

Be aware that not all issues will be picked up by the XBeach Team. So feel free to pick up any issues yourself!

Bas Hoonhout

I have tested the XBeach sourcecode with cygwin. I tested it with the following software:

• libnetcdf-devel (install through the setup.exe from cygwin).
• libnetcdf
• pkg-config
• automake
• autoconf
• libtool
• gfortran (4.5)

I tested xbeach with mpi and netcdf. I compiled and installed mpi by hand because mpi is not available by default in the setup from cygwin and because fortran expects all module files to be built with the same compiler.

The mpi version I tested with is mpich2 (latest version). Make sure you compile both xbeach and mpich2 with the same gfortran compiler. The whole install should go something like this:

tar -xzf mpich.tar.gz

cd mpich

FC=gfortran ./configure

make

make install

cd ..

cd xbeach

FC=gfortran ./configure --with-mpi --with-netcdf

make

To check the dependencies (files that should be next to xbeach or in the path) of the generated xbeach.exe, you can type ldd ./xbeach.exe . Please let me know if you get stuck.

I also updated the Visual Studio 2010 files. There is also a c# wrapper available for XBeach. That one is available through the DeltaShell project.

Since the release of this XBeach Open-Source Software (OSS) portal, the XBeach Subversion (SVN) repository is migrated to a new location. The same is true for the OpenEarth repositories. The old repository is read-only now and will not receive any updates. If you used other repositories than the XBeach and OpenEarth repositories at the old location, your account will still be valid for those repositories.

In order to start using the new repository, you will need an OSS account. Which is free!. See the instructions in the Get started section on how to register. For more information on how to migrate your working copy, see this WIKI page.

Excuse us for the inconvenience, but the benefits will be significant. You will have single sign-on for all Deltares open-source project websites, Subversion respositories and Message Boards. In the near future the OSS functionalities will be expanded with an issue tracking system and test services that will become accessible with this very same account. User account management is now automated as well.

Happy modelling!

The XBeach Team