Testing Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA)

Abstract

Regular, automated testing is a foundational principle of modern software development. Numerous widely used continuous integration systems exist, but they are often not suitable for the unique needs of scientific simulation software. Here we describe the testing infrastructure developed for and used by the Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA) project. This system allows the computationally demanding MESA test suite to be regularly run on a heterogeneous set of computers and aggregates and displays the testing results in a form that allows for the rapid identification and diagnosis of regressions. Regularly collecting comprehensive testing data also enables longitudinal studies of the performance of the software and the properties of the models it generates.

Keywords

• Astronomy software
• Open source software
• Stellar evolutionary models
• Stellar physics