broccoli belstar v2.1.0

Release of Broccoli belstar v2.1.0

New Features

• [io]:
  • Added class Console for thread-safe and convenient console output with different logging levels
  • encoding: Added convenience methods for std::string with encodeToString() and decodeFromString()
  • Added methods to parse file paths (extract file name and directory)
  • Added method to copy files
  • LogFile: now supports to specify data object instances for writing header and footer (through setHeaderData() and setFooterData). This gives more flexibility especially for log data with dynamic-size vectors/matrices (correct column count)
• [analysis]:
  • New module for analysis methods. Contains now a parallelized task-space evaluator.
• [geometry]:
  • DHParameters: a new class to assist in converting DH parameters (according to Craig) to/from homogeneous transforms.
  • CGMeshFactory: a new class providing various helpers to create geometric primitives (boxes, spheres, ...) in the CGMesh format
• [memory]:
  • MultiVector: a new class to represent multi-dimensional arrays (3D voxel grids, etc.)
  • MultiLevelGrid: a new class for multi-dimensional grid data structures with automatic data propagation (e.g. dense binary trees/quadtrees/octrees)
• [parallel]:
  • ThreadSafeContainer: a new class for protecting member data with a mutex (internal or external) for thread-safety

Bug Fixes

• [cmake]:
  • Instrumentation for coverage was always on, even in release builds. This slows down a lot of things.
• [core/io/parallel]:
  • Instances of core::PlatformHelper are not static anymore in core::Time, parallel::BackgroundWorker and io::serialization (fixes issue of wrong destruction order for static objects). This seems to have no negative influence on the performance of core::Time::currentTime() (measured on Linux).
• [io]:
  • fixed bug in LogFileBase (tried to create an empty target directory)

Non-Breaking Changes

• [io]:
  • LogFileBase now inherits from ThreadSafeContainer
  • Console now uses base functionality of ThreadSafeContainer
• [parallel]:
  • BackgroundWorker now inherits from ThreadSafeContainer
• [memory]:
  • CircularBuffer now inherits from ThreadSafeContainer