DaCHS 1.0 released

2017-07-11 Debian Licences UWS Markus Demleitner

Today, I have released DaCHS 1.0 – after long years in the 0.9 range, it was finally time to do so. The jump in the major version number was an opportunity to remove some cruft that had accumulated over the years; this, on the other hand, means that if you're running DaCHS, you should watch the upgrade and see if anything broke later (this might be the perfect time to add regression tests to your RDs).

The changelog is below, but before that a bold-faced warning:

Install python-astropy before upgrading

This is because DaCHS now depends on astropy rather than pyfits and pywcs. The latter is no longer part of Debian stretch, and so we made the jump to astropy (that would have been due during Debian stretch's lifetime anyway) even before 1.0.

Now, Debian holds back packages with new dependencies, and due to the way DaCHS' modules are distributed, DaCHS will break when some of its packages are held back. The symptom is error messages like "pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: gavodachs==0.9.8". If you already see those, a apt-get dist-upgrade should get you in business again.

With this out of the way, here is an annotated log of the major changes:

  • DaCHS' main entry point is now actually called dachs (i.e., call dachs imp q and such in the future). gavo will work as an alias for quite a while to come, though, and it's still used a lot in the documentation (you're welcome to fix this: the docs are maintained on github).
  • Hopefully more useful manpage (of course, also available with man dachs) – have a peek!
  • UWS support is now at version 1.1 (i.e., there's creationDate in jobs, filters in the joblist, and slow polling).
  • Added “declarative” licenses. Please read the Licensing chapter in the tutorial and slap licenses on your data.
  • Now using astropy.wcs instead of pywcs, and astropy.io.fits instead of pyfits. The respective APIs have, unfortunately, changed quite a bit. If you're using them (e.g., in processors), you'll have to change your code; it's unlikely services are impacted at runtime. (see also How do I update my code?).
  • Removed the //epntap#table-2_0mixin. Use
    //epntap2#table-2_0 instead (sorry).
  • Removed sdmCore (use Datalink/SODA instead); the SODA procs in //datalink are also gone, use the ones from //soda instead (sorry, SODA development has been difficult on the IVOA level).
  • Removed imp -u flag and the corresponding updateMode parse option. If you used that or the uploadCore, just mark the DDs involved with updating="True" instead.
  • Massive sanitation of input parameter processing. If you've been using inputTable, inputDD, or have been doing creative things with inputKeys, please check the respective services carefully after upgrading. See also DaCHS' Service Interface in the reference documentation. The most user-visible change in this department is if you've been using repeated parameters to fill array-valued inputs. That's no longer allowed; if you actually must have this kind of thing, you'll need a custom core and must fill the arrays by hand.
  • In DaCHS' SQL interface, tuples now are matched to records and lists to arrays (it was the other way round before). If while importing you manually created tuples to fill to array-like columns, you'll have to make lists from these now.
  • rsc.makeData or rsc.TableForDef no longer automatically make connections when used on database tables. You must give them explicit connection arguments now (with base.getTableConn() as conn:).
  • logo_tiny.png and logo_big.png are now ignored by DaCHS, all logos spit out by it are now based on logo_medium.png, including, if not overridden, the favicon (that you will now get if you have not set it before).
  • Removed (probably largely unused) features editCore, SDM2 support, pkg_resource overrides, simpleView, computedCore.
  • Removed the argparse module shipped with DaCHS. This breaks compatibility with python 2.6 (although you can still run DaCHS with a manually installed argparse.py in 2.6).

Even though that's quite a mouthful, I expect few people will actually experience breaking services. If you do, by all means let us know on the DaCHS-support mailing list.

As usual, the general upgrading instructions are available in the operator's guide; if you plan on upgrading to stretch soon, also have a look at hints on postgres upgrades. Stretch comes with postgres 9.6 (jessie: 9.4), and you should migrate sooner or later anyway.

Users not using Debian's package management can, as usual, grab tarballs from http://soft.g-vo.org/dachs.