Registry: add flag to allow integers in InputType

[andrew-platt]

This is ready to merge.

Feature or improvement description
PR #1973 modified the registry to check for invalid types in the InputType. However, the ExtLoads registry includes integers in the InputType. We really don't want integers in that derived type as it breaks with linearization.

Rather than change the ExtLoads registry and potentially break downstream codes that depend on it (AMR-Wind for example), I propose we allow an exception here. Unless I add such an exception, or force downstream changes, we cannot merge the dev branch into the dev-unstable-pointers branch.

I added a flag -inputintallow to the registry for use in such special cases.

Impacted areas of the software
Registry only.

Test results, if applicable
None.

[andrew-platt]

@bjonkman, do you have an opinion on this approach?

[bjonkman]

One reason for not having integers in the Input type is because of the extrapolation/interpolation routines. Are you omitting those routines from this module, too?

[bjonkman]

Also, that PR didn't ADD a check on the invalid type, it just printed the error message before ending. Otherwise, the Registry would end without an error message and without completing.

[deslaughter]

Instead of adding a new flag, you could disable this check if the -noextrap flag has been set: if ((ddt.interface != nullptr) && ddt.interface->only_reals && !this->no_extrap_interp) and then add that flag to for this module. I didn't see extrap/interp being called for ExternalInflow. However, I also don't think there should be an integer in the InputType.

[bjonkman]

@andrew-platt , The integers that I see in that InputType for ExtLoadsDX seem like they should be parameters or initialization inputs.

I know it's more work to fix that module (and the interface to CFD), but I think in the long term, it will be better to make the ExtLoads module align with the OpenFAST framework as much as possible.

[andrew-platt]

After looking at this a bit more, I agree with @bjonkman and @deslaughter we should simply not allow integers in the InputType regardless. These particular values really are parameters and should be treated as such. In the long run it will be better to fix this properly and align the ExtLoads module with the framework.

There also appear to be some additional issues to resolve from PR #1932, so we will address this along those issues in a different PR.

So, I'm going to close this PR without merging.

[andrew-platt]

Better solution than this PR: #2001