QCoDeS/Qcodes: QCoDeS 0.14.0 - May 2020

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)