API enhancemnts/changes

[simonsays1980]

I would like to discuss here API enhancements/changes that might help many with a not so classic EnergyPlus use case. In my opinion what we might see more and more often is that EnergyPlus will be a part of a larger simulation that has multiple modules. Hence the API might need more functionality; in some areeas maybe even changes. I would like to see here more users engaging with ideas and feature requests for the API. and hope for the developers to enrich this discussion with some insights and guidance.

[simonsays1980]

I make a start with a request I stated in this issue #10041. In larger simulations/optimzations in which EnergyPlus is one among several modules it is sometimes necessary to stop EnergyPlus, e.g. to stop long-running simulations because of changes in other modules. Up to this point the Python API had no functionality to stop EnergyPlus gracefully (instead of killing some processes). Thanks to @Myoldmopar this feature has been quickly merged (#10044) and will be part of I guess the 23.2. version.

So, from then up we can stop a simulation with:

stop_simulation(state_argument)

[simonsays1980]

After installing now several times EnergyPlus on local machines and creating Dockerfiles I want to ask this question: Are there plans to release (at least for using the Python API) a Python package that comes with EnergyPlus? This would make work so much easier- especially on the cloud. What I observe is that EnergyPlus is used more often (a) on the cloud and (b) more often in combination with other software packages (like optimizers). A Python package would give here the best alternative imo: it can be easily integrated with all kind of docker images and the user can manage the integration with other tools inside of the image (most often these tools come via a Python package too).