New stream clobber mode?

[sbrus89]

@mark-petersen, would it be possible to add an option to theclobber_mode streams attribute that truncates for a cold start of the model and appends for a restart? It's possible this is already implemented and I just don't know about it. It's also very possible this is a bad idea altogether.

cc @xylar, @pwolfram

[xylar]

I think the right way to handle this use case is to delete the files with a script before a cold start and always use append mode. It seems to me like a good deal of effort to implement a new clobber mode with this behavior, given that a simple script could take care of it otherwise.

I'm open to hearing what others think.

[xylar]

@sbrus89, we talked about this on the developer telecon on Monday. @mgduda thought the framework changes to support a new clobber mode would be doable. The main modification there would involve the C code that converts string clobber modes to integers that Fortran expects and a mechanism to indicate to the framework whether the current run is a cold start or a restart.

Within any core that wants to support this clobber mode, we would also need to set up a way to identify whether this is a cold start or a restart and to set the framework flag or whatever mechanism to indicate this. This might be trivial or it might be a little complicated.

In any case, if this is something you're interested in pursuing, I'm happy to help. If not, I'm also happy to help with workarounds like a script to delete unwanted files before doing a cold start.

[sbrus89]

@xylar, Thanks for looking into this. Obviously, it's super low-priority so maybe we can work on it together next time your back. I was just thinking it could be useful and wanted to see what others though before I forgot about it.