xref: /libCEED/julia/LibCEED.jl/docs/src/index.md (revision 6f5dc8ba493eb609f13fe336f2a5e06988b93c70)

# 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.readthedocs.io/).

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 the `JULIA_LIBCEED_LIB` environment variable
set to the absolute path of the libCEED dynamic library. For the configuration
to take effect, LibCEED.jl must be **built** with this environment variable, for
example:

```julia
% JULIA_LIBCEED_LIB=/path/to/libceed.so julia
julia> # press ] to enter package manager
(env) pkg> build LibCEED
```
or, equivalently,
```julia
julia> withenv("JULIA_LIBCEED_LIB" => "/path/to/libceed.so") do
    Pkg.build("LibCEED")
end
```


### 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.

### 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"]
```