xref: /libCEED/julia/LibCEED.jl/docs/src/index.md (revision 834f70d99eaa96f2921afabf3840cc9b58aef8d7)

# LibCEED.jl Docs

Documentation for the LibCEED.jl Julia interface to the
[libCEED](https://github.com/ceed/libceed) library.

For further information, see also the [libCEED
documentation](https://libceed.org/).

Several [short examples](Examples.md) are included to demonstrate the
functionality.

### Installation

The LibCEED.jl package can be installed with Julia's package manager by running
`] add LibCEED`. This will automatically install a pre-built binary of the
libCEED library. If you require features of a specific build of libCEED (e.g.
CUDA/GPU support, specific compiler flags, etc.) then you should compile your
own version of the libCEED library, and configure LibCEED.jl to use this binary
as described in the [Configuring LibCEED.jl](@ref) section.

!!! warning "The pre-built libCEED binaries do not support CUDA backends"
    The pre-built binaries automatically installed by LibCEED.jl (through the
    [libCEED_jll](https://juliahub.com/ui/Packages/libCEED_jll/LB2fn) package)
    are not built with CUDA support. If you want to run libCEED on the GPU, you
    will have to build libCEED from source and configure LibCEED.jl as described
    in the [Configuring LibCEED.jl](@ref) section.

#### Configuring LibCEED.jl

By default, LibCEED.jl will use the pre-built libCEED binaries provided by the
[libCEED_jll](https://juliahub.com/ui/Packages/libCEED_jll/LB2fn) package. If
you wish to use a different libCEED binary (e.g. one built from source),
LibCEED.jl can be configured using Julia's _preferences_ mechanism. Note that
this preference will be set for the currently active Julia environemnt, and can
be different between different environments. The Julia session must be restarted
for changes to take effect.

```julia
julia> using LibCEED
julia> set_libceed_path!("/path/to/libceed.so")
[ Info: Setting the libCEED library path to /path/to/libceed.so.
[ Info: Restart the Julia session for changes to take effect.
```

See the [library configuration documentation](LibCEED.md) for more details. For
information on Julia's preferences system, see
[Preferences.jl](https://github.com/JuliaPackaging/Preferences.jl).

### Features of the high-level interface for libCEED

#### User Q-functions

With LibCEED.jl, it is much easier to write dimension-independent user-defined
Q-functions that automatically work on the GPU. See the [related
documentation](UserQFunctions.md) for more information.

#### Safe access to CeedVector objects

When accessing [`CeedVector`](@ref) objects, the C interface requires the user
to manually call `CeedVectorGetArray`, paired with `CeedVectorRestoreArray`. If
the user wants read-only access, then the user must call
`CeedVectorGetArrayRead`, paired with `CeedVectorRestoreArrayRead`. This can
possibly be bug-prone, because the user may forget to restore the array, or may
match the `Read` version to get the array with non-`Read` version to restore the
array (or vice versa).

In LibCEED.jl, this difficulty is mitigated using the [`witharray`](@ref)
function and [`@witharray`](@ref) macro. There are also read-only versions,
[`witharray_read`](@ref) and [`@witharray_read`](@ref). When using this
functionality, it is impossible to forget to restore the array, and the correct
version is always paired properly.

For example, in `ex1-volume`, the following C code
```c
// Compute and print the sum of the entries of 'v' giving the mesh volume.
const CeedScalar *v_host;
CeedVectorGetArrayRead(v, CEED_MEM_HOST, &v_host);
CeedScalar vol = 0.;
for (CeedInt i = 0; i < sol_size; i++) {
  vol += v_host[i];
}
CeedVectorRestoreArrayRead(v, &v_host);
```
is replaced with the following equivalent Julia code
```julia
# Compute and print the sum of the entries of 'v' giving the mesh volume.
vol = witharray_read(sum, v, MEM_HOST)
```

In `ex2-surface`, the following C code
```c
// Initialize 'u' with sum of coordinates, x+y+z.
CeedScalar *u_host;
const CeedScalar *x_host;
CeedVectorGetArray(u, CEED_MEM_HOST, &u_host);
CeedVectorGetArrayRead(mesh_coords, CEED_MEM_HOST, &x_host);
for (CeedInt i = 0; i < sol_size; i++) {
  u_host[i] = 0;
  for (CeedInt d = 0; d < dim; d++)
    u_host[i] += x_host[i+d*sol_size];
}
CeedVectorRestoreArray(u, &u_host);
CeedVectorRestoreArrayRead(mesh_coords, &x_host);
```
is replaced with the following equivalent Julia code
```julia
@witharray_read(x_host=mesh_coords, size=(mesh_size÷dim, dim),
    @witharray(u_host=u, size=(sol_size,1),
        sum!(u_host, x_host)))
```
The macro version can provide better performance if a closure is required, and
allow for convenient reshaping of the vector into equivalently sized matrices
or tensors.

### Library configuration
```@contents
Pages = [
  "LibCEED.md",
]
```

### Ceed objects
```@contents
Pages = [
   "Ceed.md",
   "CeedVector.md",
   "ElemRestriction.md",
   "Basis.md",
   "QFunction.md",
   "Operator.md",
]
```

### Utilities
```@contents
Pages = [
   "Misc.md",
   "Globals.md",
   "Quadrature.md",
]
```

### C interface
```@contents
Pages = ["C.md"]
```