MODFLOW-USGS
Nightly example releases
Consider doing an MF6 examples nightly build, or include them in the MF6 nightly build. Currently we have a development version of the RTD site but we only release examples (i.e. build and distribute input files from the Python/FloPy scripts) at "official" MF6 release time.
The ultimate aim here is consistent versioning for MF6 and MF6 example models. Since they must be synchronized to the same set of DFNs, IMO they should be on an identical release cycle. (Moving them into the same repository is one way, but might be tricky and they have lived separate for a long time, so I am ignoring that possibility for now.)
Immediate motivation is that we already have tooling which can identify/install both official and nightly MF6 binaries (latter identified by date), but we have had no easy way of installing examples, and in any case we currently only distribute "official" examples releases. The example models API under development is a tentative solution, but ideally it should have the same version semantics as flopy's get-modflow for the mf6 official or nightly build.
Maybe one way to do this, for reduced maintenance burden, is to consolidate the "full" and "minimal" build flavors and make the nightly build contents identical to the official. This will mean mf6 release automation needs to build the examples/docs itself, instead of downloading the release from the examples repo
Maybe one way to do this, for reduced maintenance burden, is to consolidate the "full" and "minimal" build flavors and make the nightly build contents identical to the official.
This is probably easiest long term but it bloats the nightly dist. (Then the difference between flavors would just be disclaimer text, version string output, features enabled/disabled, what gets into the mf6io guide, etc). Another option is just to add the examples to the developmode distribution. A third option is to post both developmode and releasemode distributions nightly. Anybody have preferences?
After #2556 the two distribution flavors are called "releasemode" and "developmode", respectively, just to note.
After chatting with @aprovost-usgs we landed on this
add the examples to the developmode distribution
..or pulling the examples release assets over into the nightly build releases, as the most straightforward options. Will raise in a near future team call, just posting here for transparency.