Firedrake meeting 2026 05 19

Date and time 2026-05-19 1600 UTC+1

Action Items

1. Pick Chair and Minuter (PB to pick)
2. ALL: (ongoing) triage the open issues and confirm if they are indeed still open (and perhaps provide labels)
3. ALL: do things with SV's branches
4. DH: Email to Andreas to have 2 (+ others!!!) loopy PRs merged TODO: FIND OUT WHICH PRS THESE ARE
5. DH: Talk to GregVernon about PR#2116.
6. CW: More testing configurations (minutes) DONE
7. JHC: New manual release

Minutes

Present: CW (minuter), LC, AC, DH, JHC, PB

Apologies:

Firedrake+PETSc

Tutorials

• DH: Need to make a decision on the tutorials: aim was PB solvers and JHC+RK DA+irksome
• DH: Want names and titles on the programme
• DH: PB go first
• PB: Could do the submesh demo
• DH: Should be interactive - in a notebook - need more "try this out" sections/exercises
• DH: This could go into release or could be hosted in a git repo with the Colab cell at the top
• JHC: on track, needs to prod RK
• JHC: maybe do the adjoint if not time for the full WC4DV method

Name badges

• DH: Someone needs to make 2 PDFs using Inkscape: name+affiliation both sides, QR code to programme, conference logo (steal from website)
• ACTION POINT: CW to do this

CW/PB GoalAdaptiveNonlinearVariationalSolver

CW: I would like to break this class up into different bits that other could then use (e.g. AC, but might be a push).

https://github.com/firedrakeproject/firedrake/pull/4893

• JHC: Would like there to be a command line type of interface

• DH: This is more like PETSc options than other cases. It feels like a SNES. It feels like "too many things are being hammered into one object". For example why does a solver have an output directory for VTK?

• DH: Saving files is a callback.

• DH: We should be passing in solver options. Drop the existing options object.

• CW: Could this apply to AC's work?

• DH: AC is working on 'mutable function spaces', unsure if it applies

• JHC: Thinks maybe refining is a different process to moving as you want to go back to the coarse grid

• DH: This isn't always the case

• Consensus is that this is maybe a good idea but out of scope for this PR.

• DH: An awful lot of the code should really be callbacks.

• DH: And the arguments that are parameter dictionaries should just go into the main parameter set.

• JHC: Please think about having options prefixes. E.g. ganvs_primal_ and ganvs_dual.

• DH: We should sit on this until the Firedrake meeting. MK would have useful input.

CW: Testing configurations

https://github.com/firedrakeproject/firedrake/pull/5117

Also, for everyone's information, https://github.com/firedrakeproject/firedrake/pull/5121

• ACTION POINT CW: Add info for both to contribution guide

JHC / DS: AuxiliaryOperatorSNES

https://github.com/firedrakeproject/firedrake/pull/5119

Nonlinear preconditioning / Richardson iterations, with a demo for the Allen-Cahn equation.

• Very very close. We love composability.

Team catch up (if time)

Merge PRs

Date of next meeting

NOTE: 3pm!

1500 UTC+0100 2026-05-26