Input Specification
ATS input files are xml files, which can be quite annoying for a human to create from scratch. xml is great from the code’s perspective, but it can be quite unintuitive to a human. That said, is it really that much worse than structured text with meaningful whitespace and other nightmares from other codebases? There really isn’t a perfect solution yet.
We have several approaches in the works to simplify working with ATS input files. This includes python-based front-ends for creating them, higher level specs using YAML or other formats, and more. Contributions in this front would be fantastic! In the meantime, the input spec is what it is, making this documentation critical.
The input spec changes slightly from version to version, but an input file should never stop working due to commits within the same ATS release version. Furthermore, whenever possible, we try to include python scripts for taking an input file that worked in one version and updating it to the next newer version. These are available at https://github.com/amanzi/ats/tree/master/tools/input_converters