XDMF and ParaView: checkpointing format

Checkpointing, i.e. saving and reading results of finite element computation is crucial, especially for long-time running simulations where execution is interrupted and user would like to restart the process from last saved time step. On the other hand, visualization of results in thid-party software such as ParaView is inevitable.
In the previous DOLFIN versions (2017.1.0 and older) these two functionalities were strictly separated. Results could have been saved via HDF5File interface for later computations and/or stored in a format understood by ParaView - VTK’s .pvd (File interface) or XDMF (XDMFFile interface). This led to data redundancy and error-prone workflow.
The problem essentially originated from incompatibilities between both libraries, DOLFIN and ParaView (VTK). DOLFIN’s internal representation of finite element function is based on vector of values of degrees of freedom (dofs) and their ordering within cells (dofmap). VTK’s representation of a function is given by it’s values at some points in cell, while ordering and geometric position of these points is fixed and standardised within VTK specification.
For nodal (iso- and super-parametric) Lagrange finite elements (Pk , dPk ) both representations coincide up to an ordering. This allows to extend XDMF specification and introduce intermediate way of storing finite element function - intrinsic to both, ParaView and DOLFIN.
The necessary work was done as a part of Google Summer of Code 2017 project Develop XDMF for- mat for visualisation and checkpointing, see https://github.com/michalhabera/gsoc-summary. New checkpointing functionality is exposed via write checkpoint() and read checkpoint() methods.