Qcodes

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

The February 2021 release of QCoDeS.

---------
Improved:
---------

- Commit data directy to dataset cache (2667) (2761)
- Removed duplicate get call in ``_ParamCaller`` used to acquire
parameters out of the main thread. This fix resulting in a 2x speed up for multi-threaded experiments (2712)
- Add ``pandas`` and ``xarray`` methods to ``DataSetCache`` matching the ``DataSet`` (2763)
- Fix to Avoid loading data twice in dataset's ``to_xarray_dataset`` method (2762)
- Add optional ``tqdm`` progress bar to ``doNd`` functions (2734)
- Improvment to ``Station`` by adding the ``load_all_instruments`` method to load everything specified
in configuration yaml (2721) (2754)
- In ``guid_helpers`` the regular expression used to read guids from a string represantation of a
list/tuple of guids was flawed. Improvment to use ``ast.parse`` makes it a lot easier and error proof. (2700)
- Fix for station snapshot of parameters with ``snapshot_exclude`` (2692)


------------
New drivers:
------------

- AWG Driver for the Keysight ``M9336A`` PXIe I/Q Arbitrary Waveform Generator. This driver provides
a simple wrapper around the IVI-C drivers from Keysight (2613)
- Driver wrapper for the Keysight ``M960X`` DAC. This driver provides an interface into the IVI-C driver
provided by Keysight (2613)


-----------------
Improved drivers:
-----------------

- Feature to determine the frequency and power parameter validators on the Agilent ``E8527D`` microwave
source based on the installed options (2690)


---------------
Under the hood:
---------------

- Remove dependency on gitpython (2738)
- Add two more SMUs to B1500 yaml sim file, useful for testing (2722)
- Modernize packaging by moving most static packaging data to ``setup.cfg`` (2693)
- Remove left over usage of deprecated ``get_data_as_pandas_dataframe`` (2674)

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

The January 2021 release of QCoDeS.

-----------------
Breaking Changes:
-----------------

- Removed deprecated SD_common modules from Keysight (2544)
- Removed deprecated ``add_parameter`` method from ``DataSet`` (2582)

-------------
Deprecations:
-------------

- Unused semi private functions ``modify_values`` and ``modify_many_values``
are deprecated (2582)

----
New:
----

- Add native and convenient XArray data export methods to ``DataSet`` supporting
concatenation, also improve the Pandas DataFrames export methods (2507)
- Possibility to measure parameters in a separate thread per instrument
inside ``doNd`` functions (2616)
- guid_helpers: Extracting guids from database files and list of strings (2541)

---------
Improved:
---------

- Ravel data before inserting into DataSet cache (2664)
- Removed duplicated attributes in channel.py (2560)
- Fix header levels and section structure in Measurement example notebook (2624)
- ``doNd`` notebook update: the notebook compares ``doNd`` with ``Measurement``
context manager (2512)
- Allow passing ``ParamSpecBase`` objects to ``DataSet``'s ``get_parameter_data``
and related methods(2655)

------------
New drivers:
------------

- Keysight N9030B Spectrum Analyzer (2553)

-----------------
Improved drivers:
-----------------

- Keysight B1500: support measuring any number of channels during IV sweep (2649)
- Add checks for signal current level and voltage level queries in Keysight E4980A (2561)
- Set signal mode and snapshot_exclude in Keysight E4980A (2612)
- Add test to ensure that AWG70000A driver throws a warning when waveform is clipped (2585)
- Add input offset voltage parameter to Basel SP983C (2648)

---------------
Under the hood:
---------------

- Add support for type checking with Numpy 1.20 (2499)
- Minor typing improvements (2546)
- Improved minimum requirements in qcodes setup (2569)
- Improved tests (2581)
- Filter google rcp related warnings (2598)
- Removed unneeded html theme path (2608)

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

The December 2020 release of QCoDeS.

-----------------
Breaking Changes:
-----------------

- The default behavior of do_plot in doNd functions changed to False.
The default value can be configured in the qcodesrc.json config file (2478)
- plotting: Don't scale empty units (2488)

----
New:
----

- Example notebook for using Plottr with Qcodes measurements for live plotting (2494)
- Add kwarg for passing experiment to doNd functions (With tests) (2526)

---------
Improved:
---------

- The old loop and plotting methods are removed from driver notebooks: Alazar9360 (2477)
- Add PycQED to related projects (2446)
- Updated HP8753D notebook with doNd and its driver timeout (2520)
- Add config options for dataset write_in_background and write_periode (2511)
- filter urllib3.connection related warnings from console logger (2540)

-----------------
Improved drivers:
-----------------

- Keysight 34465A: Add missing parameters to pyvisa sim yaml file (2452, 2493)
- Driver SR86x: Add complex voltage (2458)
- Fix parameter name in Alazar ATS9870: EXTERNAL_CLOCK_10MHz_REF (2492)
- Add DC bias and measurement time params to Keysight E4980A driver (2502)
- Add impedance autorange parameter to Keysight E4980A driver (2531)
- Keysight B1500: ensure making snapshot of the pyvisa-sim instrument does not raise warnings (2532)

---------------
Under the hood:
---------------

- Verify that requirements are compatible with Spyder (2443)
- Require use of Any in all generic types (2450, 2453, 2454, 2457, 2463, 2468, 2469)
- Minor typing improvements (2456, 2475)
- refactor logic to find scale and prefix for units into a public function (2480)
- Use the latest json schema draft supported by python jsonschema validator (2510)
- GitHub actions cleanup (2535)
- Update readme badge to point to github actions (2538)

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

Patch:
______

This release is a patch for fixing unwanted debug messages shown in the Spyder's console (2444)