Store and Retrieve Info about built nestml models

[med-ayssar]

After building a nestml model, we lose every piece of information, the nest & python versions, the compiler flags and also probably the list of nestml models bundled in the cpp-library.

I would suggest storing such info in XDG_DATA_HOME (i.e ~/.config/nestml) with the following pattern: XDG_DATA_HOME/nestml/{nestmlVersion}/{pythonVersion}/{TargetVersion}/nestml.lock. This file should contain the metadata of each built cpp-library with nestml.

Thus, we can extend nestml-cli to list all built nestml-cpp-librays, applying filter, and providing facility to load all models in a given path without explicitly calling nest.Install multiple times.

[clinssen]

Hi, thanks for your suggestion! Wouldn't it be possible to generate this info in the target directory instead? In the way we currently say, in the Jinja templates:

Generated from NESTML {{ nestml_version }} at time: {{ now }}

Could there be an extra text file/JSON file generated containing the metadata? Do you need this to be accessible at runtime from querying the dynamic library with a certain API, or is it okay to just iterate over the directories looking for the metadata?

May I ask what the use case is that you need this for; or is it more generally about reproducility?