v0.30.0

This release of simtools, the simulation toolkit for the CTA Observatory, includes the following main changes:

Bugfixes

• Disable Astropy IERS auto-download in offline/test mode to prevent network timeouts and spurious warnings causing test failures. (#2129)
• Fix sim_telarray seed handling when passing a single value to sim_telarray_seed together with sim_telarray_instrument_seed, and add integration coverage for this configuration. (#2131)
• Fix contradictory CLI argument behavior by making defaulted simulation options optional so help defaults are actually applied in simulate-prod. (#2135)
• Fill iact_atmo_version field correctly in the CORSIKA7 building option file (build_opts.yml). (#2169)

Documentation

• Update contributing and authorship procedures. (#2160)

New Features

• Add option to generate the production grid along declination lines and include a module to plot the production grid in horizontal and equatorial coordinate systems. (#2075)
• Added a unified parameter export flow for both file-backed and dict-backed table parameters, with stricter validation and normalization of table content including required column_units for fadc_pulse_shape.
  Plot table generation now selects the schema document by model_parameter_schema_version (with fallback), and sim_telarray/model/database handling was aligned with expanded unit test coverage. (#2088)
• Add additional printouts and checks for using container images (e.g., if container exists or needs to be pulled). Improve startup procedures for simtools-run-application. (#2111)
• Add UUID7-based activity IDs for each application execution, propagate into metadata, and track associated activities in workflow metadata file. (#2113)
• Add functionality to update simulation model directly from settings workflows using the model parameter version and derivation activity ID. (#2115)
• Add model_status keywords to SimulationModelsInfo schema. (#2116)
• Add possibility to overwrite model parameters for CORSIKA and sim_telarray configuration from command line. (#2124, #2127)
• Add the possibility to plot a single layout from an array layout parameter JSON file. (#2126)
• Allow custom list of telescopes for corsika limits derivation. (#2128)
• Allow to update configuration_sim_telarray fields in database using the production info files. (#2130)
• Command-line arguments now take higher precedence than configuration file options. (#2132)
• Add command line option to select figure format(s) (e.g., png, pdf): --figure_format. (#2133)
• Remove duplication of filling metadata when writing model parameter metadata information.
  Improve filling of metadata for the case of reading CTAO layouts from the common identifier gitlab repository. (#2134)
• Add CORSIKA CLI options for interaction models and runtime paths. (#2137)
• Add simtools-docs-produce-production-summary application to generate a markdown table of production version descriptions from simulation-models info files. (#2139)
• Allow file-based model parameter tables to be written with different file names than the one stored in the DB.
  Improve writing of metadata when converting sim_telarray style tables. (#2140)
• Add a new application simtools-write-reduced-event-lists to read event data from sim_telarray and write reduced event lists. (#2141)
• Allow to specify model version dependent configuration parameters in configuration files. (#2146)
• Add functionality to simtools-db-get-array-layouts-from-db to retrieve besides telescopes also calibration array elements. (#2163)
• Add CORSIKA v7.850 to simtools-prod image generation pipeline. (#2169)
• Add functionality to assign valid telescope numbers to additional MSTs in legacy prod6 simulations. (#2171)

Maintenance

• Consolidate usage of command line configuration; removed duplicated items and solved name conflicts (e.g. zenith vs zenith_angle). (#2096)
• Do not use compact numeric list in json for non-dict-type numerical values. (#2114)
• Generalize reading from git repositories. Add CTAO git repos as default values. (#2115)
• Change legend font size in tabular plotting. (#2119)
• Add command line flag to set the setting-workflows git tag for maintain_simulation_model_add_production. (#2120)
• Fix writing of dict-table style model parameter files. Improve and simplify API of ModelDataWriter. (#2121)
• Improve accuracy and completeness of Copilot instructions. (#2136)
• Add retry-attempts for downloading CORSIKA interaction tables in CI to increase robustness against network issues. (#2142)
• Add retry-attempts for cloning of model parameter repository to increase robustness against network issues. (#2143)
• Use a GitHub Action for dotenv linting instead of direct installation and execution. (#2144)
• Remove fail fast for unit test for CI unit tests. (#2145)
• Run sonar in pip 3.13. matrix step (was: conda 3.13 step). (#2147)
• Update base images to alma linux 9.7. Install GSL from source for sim_telarray. (#2153)
• Remove conda option for installation of simtools. (#2154)
• Remove run_mode setup in simulate_illuminator to avoid user confusion. (#2158)
• Remove obsolete database scripts to dump / upload dump of DB. (#2159)
• Applied notable run-time optimization for simtools-derive-mirror-rnda. (#2161)
• Introducing --all_sites and --all_model_versions tags to auto-generate plotting combinations (#2166)
• Improve efficiency and robustness of CI integration tests: simulation models used for local DB are cloned once only (and not once per model version matrix item). (#2167)
• Ensure that Apptainer image exists for HTCondor submission scripts. (#2170)

Simulation model

• Update layout names for South beta layouts in production model 7.0.0. (#2164)
• Change default simulation models version to v0.15.0. (#2165)