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About MolFlow stable and beta versions

TLDR

For critical applications (classroom courses, etc.) we recommend the stable versions, and for everyone else, the betas.

In early 2022, MolFlow 2.9 was released as part of a PhD project, with a significantly rewritten program structure. The goal was to make an abstract layer between the user interface, the new command line interface, and the execution (on CPUs, on a cluster with MPI or on a GPU). The project is not yet finished, therefore 2.8 versions are kept as "stable" and 2.9 as "beta". Find a comparison below.

Terminology

  • Beta versions are MolFlow 2.9.x SynRad 1.5.x
  • Stable versions are MolFlow 2.8.x and SynRad 1.4.x

Differences visible to users

Advantages of beta versions

  • Has command line interface (molflowCLI)
  • Has "molecule forces" feature
  • Around 3x faster ray tracing
  • New OpenGL engine (faster rendering)
  • Much faster meshing
  • Immediate ZIP writing
  • New features are only added to this version

Disadvantages of beta versions

  • Subprocess sync progress not visible (MolFlow "hangs" when clicking Begin/Pause) - not anymore, fixed in 2.9.14!
  • Slow simulation "Resume" after pause (always resynchronized) - not anymore, fixed in 2.9.10!
  • For file loading/saving, progress only visible in console, not GUI - not anymore, fixed in 2.9.13!
  • There are known issues
  • As of April 2024, and version 2.9.22, we're very close to mark 2.9 releases as stable.

Disadvantages of stable versions

  • Only bugfixes added, with the exception of some critical features that are backported from betas:
    • Fast STL collapse
    • Fast Smart Select analyze
    • Multibody STL support

Differences for developing the codes

Advantages of betas

Disadvantages of betas

  • Thousands of warning messages on compile (mostly implicit variable conversions)
  • Duplicated code for some features that both the CLI and the GUI can do
    • Texture meshing
    • File loading/saving
  • GUI-subprocess communication sometimes hangs, sometimes fails, no progress and no way to stop an operation
  • Large parts of the code rewritten but not yet understood (author left)
  • Some parts of the code too abstract (GUI support dropped)
  • SynRad CLI and Synrad beta mostly untested
  • MPI version largely untested

Disadvantages of stable versions

  • Shared code in different state for MolFlow and for SynRad
  • Old updater scheme (one entry per OS, per version)

Future plan

When all problems with the betas will be addressed, MolFlow 2.8 / SynRad 1.4 support will be dropped they will become stable (probably as MolFlow 2.10 and SynRad 1.6)

Last update: April 16, 2024