PDELab Howto
============

This is version 2.4.1 of the HOWTO package for the PDELab library.

The PDELab Howto is in maintenance mode and will be replaced by a new set of
independent tutorials that focus on individual topics and contain detailed
documentation and exercises.

PDELab[0] is a PDE solver toolbox built on top of DUNE, the Distributed and
Unified Numerics Environment [1].

The main intention is to provide a good set of high-level abstractions to allow
for a reasonably quick development of simulation codes, while at the same time
offering the flexibility to implement new numerical methods and optimize for
specific simulation scenarios.

This package contains PDELab examples and introductory documentation. The actual
library is contained in the package dune-pdelab, which this package depends on.

To get started with PDELab, you can

* take a look at the documentation in doc/howto, where you can find the PDELab
  HOWTO in a number of different file formats. There are two versions, one
  optimized for screen presentations (pdelab-howto-beamer.*) and one optimized
  for printing out and using as a reference book (pdelab-howto-article.*). As
  this package is already pretty large in this current form, the sources for
  those documents are not included in the release tarball, but you can always
  obtain them by checking out dune-pdelab-howto from Subversion (see our

* familiarize yourself with the example programs from the HOWTO document, which
  you can find in the directory src/course-examples. These examples are fully
  functional; you can compile them, run them, play around with their runtime
  parameters and try changing some things in the source code to get started with
  writing your first PDELab programs. They also make great templates for
  starting your first real project.

* look around in the other subdirectories of src/, where you will find a number
  of more advanced example programs.

Dependencies
------------

PDELab-Howto depends on the following software packages:

* DUNE core libraries (dune-common, dune-geometry, dune-grid, dune-istl,
  dune-localfunctions) version 2.4.1, and their respective dependencies.

* The dune-typetree library, version 2.4.1. You can obtain a source package from [0] or
  clone the repository at [10].

* PDELab 2.4.1 and its dependencies.

* PDELab's compiler requirements differ slightly from the underlying DUNE
  libraries: We require at least GCC 4.5 in C++11 mode, although we only
  regularly test GCC versions from GCC 4.7 onward. PDELab should also work
  with very recent versions of ICC (icpc 14.0.3+) and current clang (3.2+).

For a full explanation of the DUNE installation process please read the
installation notes [2] or the build system HOWTO [3].

License
-------

The PDELab HOWTO documentation and example programs are free open-source software,
licensed under the BSD 3-clause license for the software and the Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike License Version 3 for the documentation.

See the file COPYING for full copying permissions.

Installation
------------

Short installation instructions can be found in file INSTALL. For the full
instructions please see [2].

Links
-----

0. http://www.dune-project.org/pdelab/
1. http://www.dune-project.org
2. http://www.dune-project.org/doc/installation-notes.html
3. http://dune-project.org/doc/buildsystem/buildsystem.pdf