What’s new?

The sections below will give you the most relevant news from the PyTango releases. For help moving to a new release, or for the complete list of changes, see the following links:

What’s new in PyTango 9.5.0?

Date: 2023-10-26 9.5.0rc1

Type: major release

Changed

  • PyTango requires at least cppTango 9.5.0. See the migration guide.

  • When using the asyncio green mode, a PyTangoUserWarning will be emitted during the init_device() call, if the user’s Device methods are not coroutines (i.e., defined with async def).

  • Use 127.0.0.1 as the default host for (Multi)DeviceTestContext instead of trying to find an external IP. This allows tests to work on systems that only have a loopback interface, and also reduces firewall warnings when running tests (at least on macOS). If using it from the command line like, python -m tango.test_context MyDS.MyDevice, an external IP is still the default.

  • All warnings generated by PyTango are now instances of PyTangoUserWarning, which inherits from Python’s UserWarning.

  • Some of the dependencies packaged with the binary wheels on PyPI have changed. The bundled versions are:

Dependency

Linux

Windows

MacOS

cpptango

9.5.0

9.5.0

9.5.0

omniorb / omniorb-libs

4.3.1

4.3.0

4.3.1

libzmq / zeromq

4.3.5

4.0.5-2

4.3.5

cppzmq

4.10.0

4.7.1

4.10.0

libjpeg-turbo

3.0.0

2.0.3

3.0.0

tango-idl

5.1.1

5.1.2

5.1.2

boost

1.82.0

1.83.0

1.82.0

Added

  • Short-name access can be used for (Multi)DeviceTestContext devices. See migration guide

  • Experimental feature: use Python type hints to declare Device more easily. Read more in the new section: Use Python type hints when declaring a device.

  • set_write_value() now supports IMAGE attributes.

  • Forwarded attributes are partially supported in the (Multi)DeviceTestContext. We say partially, because a cppTango limitation (at least version 9.5.0) means root attributes on devices running in “nodb” mode (like those in launched by the TestContext) don’t work. However, it does work if the test device accesses a root attribute on a Tango device running with a Tango database.

  • Support for EncodedAttribute in high-level API devices.

  • Added free_it and clean_db arguments to tango.server.Device.remove_attribute() and tango.LatestDeviceImpl.remove_attribute() methods.

  • Support Tango server debugging with PyCharm, PyDev and VS Code. Breakpoints now work for command and attribute handler methods, as well as other standard Device methods, when running through a debugger that is based on pydevd. However, it doesn’t currently work with dynamic attributes and commands. If necessary, the feature can be disabled by setting the environment variable PYTANGO_DISABLE_DEBUG_TRACE_PATCHING=1.

  • Added support for Python 3.12.

Fixed

Removed

  • Breaking change to the API: the DevInt data type was removed, due to its removal from cppTango. See the migration guide.

  • Deprecated signature, get_write_value(self, lst)(), was removed.

What’s new in PyTango 9.4.2?

Date: 2023-07-27

Type: minor release

Changed

Added

  • Correct code coverage of server’s methods can be obtained

  • server_init_hook was added to high-level and low-level API

  • macOS wheels now are provided

Fixed

  • DevEncoded attributes and commands read methods are now segfault safe

  • DevEncoded attributes and commands now decoded with utf-8

  • DevEncoded attributes and commands can be extracted and written as str, bytes and bytesarray

  • If string encoding with Latin-1 fails, UnicodeError will be raised instead of segfaulting

  • When user gives empty spectrum properties to the DeviceTestContext, they will be patched with one space symbol “ “ for each element

  • In case patching failed or any other problems with FileDatabase, instead of crash PyTango will raise an exception and print out generated file

  • Regression when applying additional decorators on attribute accessor functions. Method calls would have the wrong signature and fail.

Removed

What’s new in PyTango 9.4.1?

Date: 2023-03-15

Type: major release (breaking changes compared to 9.4.0)

Changed

  • Removed additional function signatures for high-level attribute read/write/is_allowed methods that were added in 9.4.0 resulting in a regression. For example, the high-level write method API for dynamic attributes of the form write_method(self, attr, value) has been removed, leaving only write_method(self, attr). Similarly, unbound functions that could be used without a reference to the device object, like read_function(), are no longer supported - only read_function(device). See the migration guide.

  • The dependencies packaged with the binary PyPI wheels are as follows:
    • Linux:

      • cpptango: 9.4.1

      • omniorb: 4.2.5 (changed since PyTango 9.4.0)

      • libzmq: v4.3.4

      • cppzmq: v4.7.1

      • libjpeg-turbo: 2.0.9

      • tango-idl: 5.1.1

      • boost: 1.80.0 (with patch for Python 3.11 support)

    • Windows:

      • cpptango: 9.4.1

      • omniorb: 4.2.5

      • libzmq: v4.0.5-2

      • cppzmq: v4.7.1

      • libjpeg-turbo: 2.0.3

      • tango-idl: 5.1.2

      • boost: 1.73.0

Fixed

  • Regression for undecorated read attribute accessor functions in derived device classes. E.g., if we have class A(Device) with attribute reading via method A.read_my_attribute, then reading my_attribute from class B(A) would fail. More generally, repeated wrapping of methods related to attributes, commands and standard methods (like init_device) is now avoided.

  • Regression when applying additional decorators on attribute accessor functions. Method calls would have the wrong signature and fail.

What’s new in PyTango 9.4.0?

Date: 2023-02-15

Type: major release

Warning

significant regressions - use newer release!

Changed

  • PyTango requires at least cppTango 9.4.1. See the migration guide.

  • Breaking change to the API when using empty spectrum and image attributes. Clients reading an empty attribute will get an empty sequence (list/tuple/numpy array) instead of a None value. Similarly, devices that have an empty sequence written will receive that in the write method instead of a None value. See the migration guide on empty attributes and extract as.

  • Python dependencies: numpy is no longer optional - it is required. Other new requirements are packaging and psutil.

  • Binary wheels for more platforms, including Linux, are available on PyPI. Fast installation without compiling and figuring out all the dependencies!

  • The dependencies packaged with the binary PyPI wheels are as follows:
    • Linux:

      • cpptango: 9.4.1

      • omniorb: 4.2.4

      • libzmq: v4.3.4

      • cppzmq: v4.7.1

      • libjpeg-turbo: 2.0.9

      • tango-idl: 5.1.1

      • boost: 1.80.0 (with patch for Python 3.11 support)

    • Windows:

      • cpptango: 9.4.1

      • omniorb: 4.2.5

      • libzmq: v4.0.5-2

      • cppzmq: v4.7.1

      • libjpeg-turbo: 2.0.3

      • tango-idl: 5.1.2

      • boost: 1.73.0

  • When using the --port commandline option without --host, the ORBendpoint for gio::tcp passed to cppTango will use "0.0.0.0" as the host instead of an empty string. This is to workaround a regression with cppTango 9.4.1. Note that if the --ORBendPoint commandline option is specified directly, it will not be modified. This will lead to a crash if an empty host is used, e.g., --ORBendPoint giop:tcp::1234.

Added

  • User methods for attribute access (read/write/is allowed), and for commands (execute/is allowed) can be plain functions. They don’t need to be methods on the device class anymore. There was some inconsistency with this previously, but now it is the same for static and dynamic attributes, and for commands. Static and dynamic commands can also take an fisallowed keyword argument. See the migration guide.

  • Device methods for reading and writing dynamic attributes can use the high-level API instead of getting and setting values inside Attr objects. See the migration guide.

  • High-level API support for accessing and creating DevEnum spectrum and image attributes. See the migration guide.

  • Developers can optionally allow Python attributes to be added to a DeviceProxy instance by calling unfreeze_dynamic_interface(). The default behaviour is still to raise an exception when accessing unknown attributes. See the migration guide.

  • Attribute decorators have additional methods: getter(), read() and is_allowed(). See the migration guide.

  • Python 3.11 support.

  • MacOS support. This is easiest installing from Conda-forge. Compiling locally is not recommended. See Getting started.

  • Integrated development environment (IDE) autocompletion for methods inherited from tango.server.Device and tango.LatestDeviceImpl. Attributes from the full class hierarchy are now more easily accessible directly in your editor.

Fixed

  • Log stream calls that include literal % symbols but no args now work properly without raising an exception. E.g., self.debug_stream("I want to log a %s symbol"). See the migration guide.

  • Writing a numpy.array to a spectrum attribute of type str no longer crashes.

  • Reading an enum attribute with ATTR_INVALID quality via the high-level API now returns None instead of crashing. This behaviour is consistent with the other data types.

Removed

  • Support for Python 2.7 and Python 3.5.

  • The option to install PyTango without numpy.