develop Exodus reader for Albany

[ibaned]

In support of gahansen/Albany#86, I'll try to develop a direct Exodus file reader for PUMI. The whole point is to move away from STK, so we can't take the Exodus->STK->PUMI approach. There is an Exodus reader in Omega_h that will be a starting reference point.

[gsjaardema]

You may want to look at creating an IOSS reader instead of Exodus. It would give you Exodus support in addition to CGNS, PamGen, an internal Generated Mesh, and other benefits. If you are interested, please contact me.
..Greg Sjaardema (gdsjaar@sandia.gov)

[ibaned]

Saving notes to myself, sent by @gsjaardema

There is some showing the basic Ioss structure in https://github.com/gsjaardema/seacas/blob/master/docs/IOSystem.pdf and then another that shows how exodus constructs are mapped into IOSS in https://github.com/gsjaardema/seacas/blob/master/docs/Ioss-exodus-mapping.pdf.

There is also some “example” applications that use the IOSS to copy one database to another (https://github.com/gsjaardema/seacas/blob/master/packages/seacas/libraries/ioss/src/main/io_shell.C)
And to get information about a database (https://github.com/gsjaardema/seacas/blob/master/packages/seacas/libraries/ioss/src/main/io_info.C)

You should be able to get the same surface information from IOSS that you get from Exodus.