In this version, the main change we are introducing is that AMUSE is now installable via pip (though non-python prerequisites like compilers, mpi and such still need to be installed beforehand).
The command 'pip install amuse' will install the meta-package 'amuse', which depends on 'amuse-framework' (the amuse core libraries, without any community codes), 'amuse-tests' and 'amuse-<NAME>', where <NAME> is any of the current community codes*.
The main benefit of this method is that AMUSE should be much easier and faster to install, especially when only one or a few community codes are needed. The "old" installation method will remain available as well.
Another change is that we're now consistently naming the community codes: interfaces are always imported as:
from amuse.community.codename.interface import CodeName
As a result, the module names 'phiGRAPE' and 'hermite0' have been renamed to 'phigrape' and 'hermite' respectively, and interface name MMAMS is now MakeMeAMassiveStar. The old names are still available for compatibility reasons for now, these may at some point receive a deprecation warning when used. This is unfortunately not technically possible for phiGRAPE due to case-insensitivity in some filesystems, so that code can only be used with the new, more consistent naming from now on (please update your scripts where necessary).
AMUSE 12 will also be the last version aimed mainly at Python2 (though it is compatible with Python 3). From next year, Python 2 is no longer supported by Python, and also for AMUSE it's time to move on. AMUSE 13 (to be released later this year) will be aimed at Python 3 only.
Other changes in this release include improved async support. It is now possible to queue multiple async requests per code. Async request objects can serve as input arguments to code calls.
Please let us know via https://github.com/amusecode/amuse/issues if you run into any problems, have a feature request or if you have any other questions.
*: for a few of the "DOWNLOAD_ONLY" codes, we don't have packages yet
**Known issues:**
- on macOS, amuse-brutus may fail to compile if the mpfr libraries cannot be found (209)
- ~~on macOS, amuse-simplex may fail to compile if the hdf5 libraries cannot be found (209 453)~~