[yt-dev] Announcing yt 3.0 alpha 1

[Matthew Turk]

Hi everyone,

We're proud to announce the first release ALPHA release of yt 3.0.  yt
has recently transitioned to a time-based release plan (
https://ytep.readthedocs.org/en/latest/YTEPs/YTEP-0008.html ) and this
is the first scheduled alpha of 3.0.  No date for a "final" release
has yet been set.

The yt 2.5 codebase, and further updates in the 2.x series, will be
supported for a considerable amount of time and you do not need to
upgrade.

= yt 3.0?! =

yt 3.0 represents a new direction forward for yt: getting rid of all
the underlying assumptions that data needs to be sectioned off into
nice little grid patches.  This includes supporting Octree codes
natively (NMSU-ART and RAMSES), eventual support for SPH codes, and
even opaque data structures where the data is extremely large (ARTIO).
 We're even planning support for natively handling cylindrical and
spherical coordinates.

More: http://blog.yt-project.org/post/WhatsUpWith30.html

However, this *is* an alpha release.  Not all of the existing codes
have been ported to 3.0.  Below

Additionally, this release benefits from the technical and
non-technical contributions from many new people.  yt is developed in
the context of a community of contributors, and with the push toward a
new architecture, we aim to expand that community considerably.  In
particular, this release has considerably benefited from contributions
from Chris Moody, Sam Leitner, Doug Rudd, Anthony Scopatz and Kaylea
Nelson.

= Getting It! =

To try out yt 3.0, you can now pull from the main yt repository,
update to the yt-3.0 branch, and rebuild your extensions.  Or, if you
would like to create a new, safely sectioned off environment, simply
re-run the normal "development" install script after changing the
variable BRANCH to "yt-3.0".

= What We Know Works =

 * RAMSES access to fluids (non-standard fluids require specification)
particle access bug fixes coming in next few days
 * Enzo 2.x and new-style particle IO
 * FLASH (considerably faster for fluid access)
 * Stream frontend
 * NMSU-ART
 * ARTIO
 * Gadget: reading particles from disk in standard Gadget-IO,
selecting and processing them. Because of the myriad gadget output
formats, this may not work for your code yet.
 * OWLS: reading particles from disk, selecting and processing them.
 * Tipsy: partial support for reading, selecting and processing

Other simulation platforms may work.  Not all data objects have been
ported, although most have.  There may be corner cases (large or
small) that have not been explored with these codes.

= Reporting Problems =

If you test out yt 3.0 we want to hear if it DID or DID NOT work!
Feedback is crucial at this time. yt-users and yt-dev are both good
forums for discussion, asking questions, and reporting problems.

Lots of things have changed on the backend, but we have attempted to
minimize the user-facing changes.

To report a bug please go here:

https://bitbucket.org/yt_analysis/yt/issues/new

Note that you will not receive updates if you are not logged in when
you create the bug.

= What's Next? =

The next alpha release (3.0a2) is scheduled to be released on May 15,
2013, but development can be monitored either at
http://bitbucket.org/yt_analysis/yt-3.0 or in the main yt repository
under the named branch "yt-3.0".  We hope to have ready for inclusion
additional improvements to Octree codes, a units implementation for
arrays, a field naming scheme overhaul, and further robustness for
particle codes.

If you'd like to participate, please stop by #yt on irc.freenode.net (
http://yt-project.org/irc.html ) or yt-dev (
http://lists.spacepope.org/listinfo.cgi/yt-dev-spacepope.org ), or
submit a pull request on BitBucket.

= Thanks! =

Thank you for reading to the end!