Qcodes

=============================

The June 2020 alpha release of QCoDeS

Breaking Changes:
_________________

* ``GroupParameter.group``, ``Group.parameters`` and ``Group.instrument`` are
now all read only properties (2031).
* The public attributes ``Group.get_cmd`` and ``Group.get_cmd`` have
been removed (2031).
* It is now an error to supply get/set_cmd, if get/set_raw is not abstract
(2015).

New drivers:
____________

* Add Zurich Instruments drivers. The old ZIUHFLI driver is deprecated. The
actual implementation is in
`zhinst-qcodes <https://github.com/zhinst/zhinst-qcodes/>`_
as described in
`this blog <https://blogs.zhinst
.com/andrea/2020/05/24/control-your-measurements-with-qcodes-and-labber/>`_
(2025).



Improved drivers:
_________________

* New features are added to Keysight B1517A driver to allow IV
staircase sweep measurements (2028).
* Various improvements are done on B1520A driver, such as, parsing correctly
the wrong output floats ('-0.-1') from the instrument until new firmware
release (2023), improved testing (2027), fixing spot measurement of
capacitance checking for wrong impedance model, and working with
ac_dc_volt_monitor=True (2020).
* Now on_off_val_mapping is used instead of a custom parser in Agilent
E8527D (2030).
* The parameter limits are added for the R&S ZNB-40 VNA R&S (2029).



Improved:
_________
* The DelegateParameter is now allowed to change source and also support a
None source (2005).
* The GroupParameter now correctly update their cache when a single
parameter in the group has been set or captured (2031).
* The GroupParameter now correctly implements mappings between
``value`` and ``raw_value`` e.g. ``scale`` and ``offset`` (2031).
* Snapshot_base introduce new update=None, and use cache in parameter's
snapshot_base (1833).
* Now initial cache value can be set to the Parameter using kwarg
``initial_cache_val`` (1840).
* The snapshots of stations and instruments can also be diffed now using
diff_param_values (2021).



Under the hood:
_______________

* New lines are now handled correctly on windows (2026).
* In the ``Parameter`` class, the gettable/settable have become read only
property (2024).
* Parameter cache.get is refactored to make the logic a bit more clear. Its
functionality remains the same (2008).
* The loop data location in channels test is changed for pytest-xdist to work
(2010).

===========================

The May 2020 release of QCoDeS

Breaking Changes:
_________________

* Community drivers that were shipped with ``QCoDeS``, and were deprecated
and moved to
`qcodes_contrib_drivers <https://github.com/QCoDeS/Qcodes_contrib_drivers>`_
some months ago, are now removed from ``QCoDeS``.
* Remove deprecated ``make_unique`` helper function (1985)
* Remove deprecated ``LogCapture`` that is now in ``logger.logger`` module (1984)
* Remove deprecated ``DataSet.make_complete`` method (without "d") (1978)
* Remove deprecated ``is_number`` helper function from ``measurements.py`` (1979)
* Remove deprecated setter for parameter's ``raw_value`` property (1982)
* Remove deprecated layouts/dependencies/paramspecs-related sqlite queries (1986)
* Remove deprecated ``zmq_helpers.py`` with ``Publisher`` and ``UnboundedPublisher`` (1983)
* Remove deprecated ``_save_val`` method of ``_BaseParameter`` (1980)
* Remove deprecated ``qcodes.dataset.sqlite_base`` and ``qcodes.dataset.database`` modules (1981)
* The ``name`` and the ``short_name`` attributes of the _BaseParameter have become read-only. It is not
possible to change the name or short_name of the parameter after instantiation. (1989)


Improved drivers:
_________________

* Improvements to ``KeysightB1520A`` to fix the following two issues. First, ``is_enabled`` function outputs
`False` instead of throwing an error if channels are not enabled. Second, the values of ``voltage_dc``,
``voltage_ac``, and ``frequency`` parameters can be raised/decreased at a specified rate by defining the
step attribute of these parameters. (1998)
* New method to increase or decrease the range of the ``Keysight344xx`` drivers. This method
can access and search ranges and implements them into the setter. (1996)
* Coerce ``KeysightB1500`` coefficient for nplc settings to int. The b1500 instrument does not update
integration time if it receives a non-int value. (1987)
* Added parameters to ``KeysightB1520A`` driver to allow CV staircase sweep. The ``setup_staircase_cv``
method can be used to set-up the state of the CMU for CV staircase sweep and ``run_sweep`` method to
run the sweep measurements. Look at CV Sweep section of example notebook for more description. (2011)


Improved:
_________

* ``Parameter`` name and short name are now a read only property and thus immutable. (1989)
* Add settable/gettable attribute to ``Parameter``. This enables any user to detect if a
parameter can be get/set without having to use getattr/hasattr introspection on the parameter. (1976)
* Fixed ``DelegateParameter`` unit test that previously would not run. (2004)
* Ensure ``DelegateParameter`` cache matches source parameter. (2000)
* Do not overwrite ``get`` at init of ``GroupParameter``. (1994)

Under the hood:
_______________

* Proper changes in tests of doNd utility so that temporary databases are used.
This change is necessary for parallel processing of tests. (2002)
* Exclude pylint version 2.5.0, this version produces ImportError
on collection of module. (1991)
* Fix for slack module when a user has not send any messages. (1990)
* Pytest fixtures are now used for tmp dir creation in tests. (1988)
* Fix test for legacy combined loop necessary for pytest-xdist. (2009)

What's Changed
* QDevil: Correct typo in init file by jenshnielsen in https://github.com/QCoDeS/Qcodes_contrib_drivers/pull/119
This prevented the QDevil drivers from being included in the released package for 0.12.0 and 0.13.0


**Full Changelog**: https://github.com/QCoDeS/Qcodes_contrib_drivers/compare/v0.13.0...v0.13.1

===========================

The April 2020 release of QCoDeS

Breaking Changes:
_________________

* The dictionary ``station.components['config']`` representing a Station
configuration loaded from a YAML file has been moved to ``station.config``.
The same change is reflected in the snapshot and the config can now
be accessed via ``station_snapshot['config']``. (1913)

* The ``QCoDeS`` configuration module has moved from ``qcodes.config`` to ``qcodes.configuration``
to disambiguate it from the current active config which is defined in ``qcodes.config`` as always (1682)

* It is now an error to overwrite get and set in a ``_BaseParameter`` subclass. Users have been warned against this
for a long time (1946)

* The legacy api such as Loop, active_loop, active_data_set, Measure, DataSet, new_data, load_data, Task, Wait, BreakIf,
FormatLocation, DataArray, Formatter, GNUPlotFormat, HDF5Format, DiskIO, are no more imported in ``QCoDeS`` namespace
by default. The core config now contains a new flag `import_legacy_api` that can be set to True if the legacy api
needs to be imported in the ``QCoDeS`` namespace. (1962)

* The Deprecated ``log_analysis`` module has been retired (1950)

Improved drivers:
_________________

* Types have been added to init functions of the concrete Keysight DMM drivers classes (1969)

Improved:
_________

* The public QCoDeS api imported from the toplevel qcodes namespace can also be imported from
their respective modules for ex ``qcodes.dataset``, ``qcodes.instrument`` etc. (1962)
* Complete types have been added to the qcodes station (1913)
* ``get_last_run`` has been improved to match the signature of ``get_runs`` (1960)
* The Snapshot of ``station.config`` (and other UserDicts) has been improved so that it can
be reloaded back into a dict (1961)

Documentation:
______________

* Improvements to several notebooks showing a better way of customizing parameters (1973)
* An option to execute Jupyter notebooks via Binder has been added (1943, 1948)
* A note that measurement context managers do not nest has been added (1949)
* A Typo in a Dynacool docstring has been corrected (1952)
* A note on limitations in delegate parameter has been added (1953)
* The attribute documentation for parameter has been improved (1956)
* B1500 documentation is included in the docs (1971)

Deprecations:
_____________

* ``get_data`` and ``get_values`` methods in dataset have been deprecated (1941)

Under the hood:
_______________

* Use pytest retry to re-execute known flaky test (1940)
* Update azure pipelines images (1938)
* Remove the debug log from data_set (1942)
* Code simplifications (1944)

Recommended dependencies:
_________________________

* Typechecking is performed with mypy 0.770 (1935)
* Documentation is build with latest sphinx patch release (2.4.4) (1954)
* Recommended version of h5py is 2.10 (1955, 1958)
* Hypothesis version installed for testing is limited to <5.6.0 (1959)
* Python version installed into conda env updated to 3.7.7 (1963)

===========================

This release contains a feature that was announced in 0.12.0 but not correctly included.

New Features:
_____________

New suite of sweep functions now in QCoDeS! The famous doNd functions
from the Copenhagen labs are now part of the QCoDeS library (1895).

The March 2020 release of QCoDeS

New Features:
_____________

* New suite of sweep functions now in QCoDeS! The famous `doNd` functions from the Copenhagen labs are now part of the QCoDeS library (1895).

Breaking Changes:
_________________

* The `DataSet.add_results` method no longer returns an `int`, but now returns `None`.


New Instrument drivers:
_______________________

* Keithley 3706A High Performance DMM/Switch System. (1884)
* QDevil QDAC High Precision Voltage Generator. (1613)


Improved drivers:
_________________

* Yokogawa GS200 no longer throws snapshot exception during initialization. (1930)
* Keysight 34465A DMM now returns ±`numpy.inf` for out-of-range values and not `9e±37`. (1929)

Improved:
_________

* The `DataSet` and `Measurement` classes now support out-of-thread data saving. Shave off up to 50% of your measurement time! (1896)


Documentation:
______________

No documentation updates in this release.


Deprecations:
_____________

The methods `set_measurement` and `measure` on the Station object have been deprecated.
They relied on the QCoDeS legacy dataset and were not frequently used. (1937)


Under the hood:
_______________

* The database version is now 9. An index was added for the `captured_run_id`. (1925)