Qcodes

The June 2020 release of QCoDeS. This release also includes all the changes
mentioned in alpha release of June 2020 (`0.15.0a1`).

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).
* The sweep parameters such as 'sweep_mode', 'sweep_start', 'sweep_end', 'sweep_steps' in Keysight B1520A driver is moved from class is moved from B1520A class to CVSweeper class (2044).

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 Keysight 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), CVSweepMeasurements supports all impedance models (2047).
* The measurement status are added to current and voltage parameters of B1517A driver (2051).
* Added a method to obtain the measurement status summary of IV and CV Sweep measurements (2050).
* The get functionality for sweep_auto_abort and post_sweep_auto_abort parameters is added in Keysight B1517A and B1520A driver (2049).
* The error handling of Keysight B1500 driver is improved. Now each time a parameter is set the instruments queries for the error and throws exception is an error is received (2041).
* 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).
* Add a few system functions to the Keithley 2450 driver (2052)

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).
* Added new dependency: "typing_extensions" (2048)

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

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).