Enhance format_precice_config.py (pre-commit hook script)

[Toddelismyname]

The goal is to organize and enhance the structure of the elements for improved readability.

Top-Level Elements

Top-level elements are now sorted in the order:

1. data
2. meshes
3. participants
4. m2n
5. coupling scheme

Unknown elements will appear last.

Participant Elements

Participant elements are reordered as follows:

• First:
  • provide-mesh
  • receive-mesh
• Then:
  • write-data
  • read-data
• Finally:
  • mapping:

A newline is added after read/write mesh elements.

Coupling Scheme

In the coupling scheme, the following elements are paired together:
- relative-convergence-measure

• all 3 valid ...-convergence-measure (As long as i didn't forget one)
• exchange

Changes Before and After Calling the Script

Ran the script on the generated (unformatted) Precice Config of https://github.com/precice-forschungsprojekt/PreCICE-Genesis. before
and the result was: after

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Note: This editing is not 100% finished yet and requires further testing. For now, it stays as a draft. However, if any changes are requested, they will be considered for implementation.

Questions

• Are the initial elements inside coupling-scheme fine as they are, or do you want them changed up a bit ? It is also possible to print all other elements in 1 go without adding the empty line after those 3: 'participants', 'max-time', 'time-window-size' link to line

• Does it matter for this hook to check for some kind of correctness. What I mean by that is that if for example no exchanges exist. The current logic has an if exchange_elements so it only prints the new line when they exist, so there are no multiple empty lines spammed.

[fsimonis]

Can you define the orders as global constants and write both key functions outside the big loop?

This should make them more compact and call sites will be more readable.

[Toddelismyname]

Hope i fixed it with this commit: ad3a35d .

[fsimonis]

Why is this necessary?

[Toddelismyname]

Regarding if:
This code adds an extra newline between participants to improve readability of the XML output.

The code if i < last: means "if this is not the last participant", and self.print() adds an empty line. This creates visual separation between different participant elements.

For example, without this, the XML might look like:

<participant name="Fluid">
   ...
</participant>
<participant name="Solid">
   ...
</participant>

With the extra newline, it becomes:

<participant name="Fluid">
   ...
</participant>

<participant name="Solid">
   ...
</participant>

=> So if you want no new lines between participants this needs to be removed

---

Regarding continue:
The continue statement is used in the context of a loop to skip the rest of the current iteration and move to the next item in the loop.

In this specific case, the continue is used because the code has a special handling block for participant elements. After processing a participant element completely (including its children, closing tag, and optional newline), the continue statement ensures that the loop moves to the next element without executing the subsequent code blocks for other element types.

Without the continue, the code would fall through to the next sections of the loop, which might handle other types of elements like coupling-scheme. By using continue, it ensures that only the participant-specific processing is applied to participant elements.

Here's a simplified example to illustrate:

for group in sorted_children:
    if 'participant' in str(group.tag):
        # Special participant processing
        process_participant(group)
        continue  # Skip the rest of the loop for this iteration
    
    # These would only be processed for non-participant elements
    if 'coupling-scheme' in str(group.tag):
        process_coupling_scheme(group)
    else:
        process_other_element(group)

=> So skipping the loop seems to be the safer bet to prevent unwanted behavior ?

---

So to summarize:

• The if is only needed if new lines between participants are wanted.
• The continue is not really needed but seems like the safer bet

Please tell me on how you want me proceed regarding these points.