MESAHub / MESAHub/mesa

Remove some rates settings from module-level variables

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#210 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
rainy day rates-net
Dominant language
Fortran
Stars
249
Forks
82
Avg merge
1d 3h
Merged PRs (30d)
3

Description

The call to `rates_init` sets some module-level configuration variables (e.g., `rates_table_dir`, `use_special_weak_rates`). The last call to rates_init will "win" which can lead to some surprising outcomes if you pick different values for these in each star of a binary. So you basically get forced to use the same settings for both stars (whether you know it or not...).

In eos/kap/net we have a handle and General_Info structure where we can store config options like that (and then different stars have different handles), but there's no such thing in rates. Not clear to me how to do this cleanly in the current structure.

This is quite a longstanding limitation, but someday if rates/net get cleaned up, it should be fixed.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by reading the rates_init call and the module-level settings named in the issue, including rates_table_dir and use_special_weak_rates. Compare them with the handle and General_Info structures used in eos/kap/net; done means rates configuration is independent for each star rather than determined by the last rates_init call.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
fortran
Domain
hpc
Issue type
Refactor
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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