Foreword

1. Caveat

This document is under development. To write a documentation is a hard task and usually the code evolves quicker than the documentation. We are doing a big effort to document all details of the software. While the project will mature, new chapters will be draft and old ones will be revised in order to stay as close as possible in sync with the actual realization. Please, keep tuned and check regularly the news in this document. Also, remember that the source code of the documentation is in same repository that GRASP software allowing everybody to contribute to this document. If you are interesting in contribute making corrections or adding new text we will be very glad of receive your suggestions. In that case, please, have a look to the technical documentation to know how to contribute (www.grasp-open.com/tech-doc).

2. What you will find in this document

  • A general vision of scientific algorithm
  • A general vision of software arquitecure
  • How to compile the code including description of prerequisites
  • How to run the code including a general vision about how it works
  • References to other documents, especially to the detailed documentation of the major components of the system when it is available or scientific papers.

3. What you won't find in this document

  • A detailed description of the scientific algorithm, one refers to Dubovik et al. 2011 for more information.
  • A detailed description of each module, routine or data structure being part of the production system. For developers, technical documentation is provided as another documentation. Please, have a look to: www.grasp-open.com/tech-doc
  • A documentation of all extensions of the software. Each extension has to have its own documentation. Here it is described only main GRASP package and only if an extension provide a very important feature which is widely used it can be described here exceptionally.

4. Versioning

GRASP software born many years ago. In 2013, the developement team started the tag releases with following format vXX.YY.ZZ where XX is the number of major version, YY is the number of minor version and ZZ the revision. This nomenclature system is valid from first stable version (v1.0.0) that at the moment of write this lines it does not exist yet. Beta versions (v0.YY.ZZ) will follow more flexible rules of naming and it each name will be decided by the developer team taking into account if a version introduce new important features, break the compatibility with previous versions, etc. For most curious people, first GRASP tag was v0.2.0 and it was not public yet. The code started to be publicly available from the version v0.7.0 and regularly, developer team releases the latest developments with really innovative features.