=== Mission and General Plan ===
The goal of ASPECT is to provide the geoscience community with an extensible software written in C++ to support research in simulating convection in the Earth mantle and elsewhere by providing a well-documented, tested code base.

The general goals are:

  # To include community developed features: provide help and review contributions
  # To run tutorials and hackathons
  # To fix bugs and maintain the code base
  # Benchmarking and implementation of new features based on CIG and community feedback
  # To provide regular software releases
  # To provide support via mailing list, github issues, etc.

=== Suggested current work items (2017) ===
  # Interface to couple !BurnMan & ASPECT
  # Revision of the 2nd ASPECT paper
  # Work on deal.II related features
  # Initial work on coupling with the mineral physics toolbox !BurnMan
  # Deprecation of outdated features towards ASPECT 2.0
  # Redesign of non-linear solver infrastructure (tests/benchmarks)
  # Merge the Newton solver
  # Implement and test the new parameter GUI

=== Long term plan ===
  # Stokes Solver improvements (melt preconditioner, Schur complement improvements, GMG)
  # Benchmarking of different compressible formulations
  # Participate in community benchmark efforts
  # Perform parallel performance benchmarking of deal.II and ASPECT to increase efficiency
  # Develop a robust non-linear solver framework
  # Develop a robust and scalable passive and active tracer code
  # Improve interoperability with codes used in other fields of study e.g. mineral physics, seismology, or the planetary sciences
  # Provide coupling with the mineral physics toolbox !BurnMan

=== Completed Items ===
Early 2017:

  # ASPECT 1.5.0 release
  # We successfully benchmarked ASPECT with the Blankenbach benchmarks
  # Initial work on parameter GUI

Oct 2016 - Jan 2017:

  # Mini hackathon in December before AGU
  # The 2nd ASPECT paper got submitted
  # We implemented and merged a correct Boussinesq, ALA, and TALA approximation
  # We successfully benchmarked ASPECT with the !TanGurnis and King2010 benchmarks
  # The melt paper has been published
  # The free surface paper “Stability and accuracy of free surface time integration in viscous flows” has been accepted
  # We have merged a large number of improvements to the particle code, making it vastly faster than it was before
  # A paper describing the techniques underlying the particle code has been written and submitted
  # We wrote an initial !BurnMan coupling module for adiabatic conditions coming out of mineral physics data