[GSAS-II] Updates to GSAS-II

[Toby, Brian H.]

Today we posted version 3000 of GSAS-II(!) This makes the previous “2 frame” version of GSAS-II, available for testing, into the standard release. If you have not seen it, what has happened is that we have combined the “data tree” and “data editing” windows into a single window, so now GSAS-II creates only two windows, one for plots/graphics and the other for the GUI. (N.B. Frame is the wxPython name for a window, which is why we called this “2 frame”). All comments we have gotten on this change have been positive. Note that we recommend running GSAS-II so that output goes to a cmd/terminal window so there is an additional display-only window for error and status messages. 

If you previously used the help menu to switch to the test “2frame” version, when you make your next update (soon, we suggest), it should switch back to the standard “trunk” version. If you are still using the old version with separate windows, we suggest updating right away. Either way, GSAS-II from this point forward will have the two GUI windows combined. Also, starting with version 3002, the help option to switch to the test/standard version should disappear from the menu. 

There have been some other fairly recent changes. One is that GSAS-II refinements have gotten about a factor of two faster. Also, to reduce the size of the GSAS-II download, we no longer include binary files for all platforms in the standard installation. Instead running the bootstrap.py or GSASII.py file will download one set of binaries matching the platform you are using. If you are hosting a GSAS-II installation on a server for multiple platforms, you will likely want to install all the binaries. To do that use the bootstrap.py -server option (step #8 on https://subversion.xray.aps.anl.gov/trac/pyGSAS/wiki/InstallLinux). Note, if you installed GSAS-II with a admin account, you need to run it (or bootstrap.py) from that admin account to perform upgrades. If you upgrade from inside GSAS-II, the first time you run it, it will install the appropriate binary files, so you will likely need to run GSAS-II once from that admin account so that it can write to the subdirectory where the binary files will be installed. 

These changes will likely introduce some unintended consequences (aka bugs). Please let us know about them.

Brian (& Bob)