new clawmultip.py for parameter sweeps, and example

[rjleveque]

An attempt at some general code to make it easier to do a parameter sweep in Clawpack, using multiprocessing.Pool to spread the runs between a specified number of processes, and sending the output and plots to distinct directories.

See

• clawutil/src/python/clawutil/README_clawmultip.txt
• clawutil/examples/clawmultip_advection_1d_example1/README.txt

for more information.

Plotting requires a modified version of plotclaw.py available in clawpack/visclaw#315.

[mandli]

There are a number of implementations of this type of functionality that allow for more flexibility for running tests and more structure including robust ways to capture and redirect output even within a queuing system (e.g. slurm). I know at least @dsrim has an implementation and I have been using one github.com/mandli/batch for sometime on multiple machine setups.

It would be nice to have a standard tool to do this, and I think there's some good ideas here that we could take and incorporate into some other implementations along with an easy example.

[rjleveque]

@mandli, @dsrim: Yes, I'm hoping to work with you both at the upcoming hackathon to see if this can be improved, but thought I'd add my current version as a possible starting point.