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McStas/McXtrace v3.8.2

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@willend willend released this 10 Sep 19:35
· 191 commits to main since this release
v3.8.2
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Changes in McStas/McXtrace 3.8.2

Covers everything since the last full release, 3.7.9 (July 2, 2026), including all changes already shipped quietly via the intermediate conda-forge releases 3.7.10–3.7.25, and a ground-up rewrite of the McStas/McXtrace manuals.

What's Changed

Common to McStas and McXtrace

Manuals

  • First full manual makeover since the McStas 2.x / McXtrace 1.x series. Tool-usage chapters (mcrun/mxrun, mcplot, mcdisplay, mcgui, mcdoc, ...) rewritten against the actual CLI code; component reference/parameter tables now generated directly from the current .comp sources (closing a long-standing manual/code drift); mcdoc itself reworked to support it. By @willend in #2592
  • Numerous long-standing inaccuracies fixed along the way: RNG engine description (KISS default / MT optional), obsolete components now explicitly labelled as such, stale legacy sections removed, http->https, and a batch of LaTeX build-pipeline fixes; McXtrace manual also had McStas copy-paste leftovers removed and its "running"/RNG sections aligned with McStas's — all by @willend in #2592
  • AI-assisted: reference material and source code (usage articles, grammar/cogen.c, example instruments, component sources, tool CLIs) were given to an AI coding agent to draft the updated text, reviewed and merged by @willend. Given the scale of the rewrite, minor errors/omissions in the manuals are expected — please flag anything you spot via a GitHub issue
  • mcdoc's browser-based overview page now also links to per-tool cheat-sheets (mcrun, mcgui, mcplot, mcdisplay, mctest, mcdoc, code generators) and to new standalone Instrument/Component grammar reference pages, all a click away from the component browser by @willend

New tooling

  • New tools mcplotdiff-html/mcplotdiff-pyqtgraph/mcplotdiff-matplotlib: plot the difference between two simulation results, monitor by monitor (diff.monN = a.monN - b.monN), with a diverging blue/white/red colour scale for 2D monitors and diff datasets written out as normal, reopenable McCode .dat files by @willend in #2560, #2562, #2564 — later reworked to show %-difference in #2599 and to always write diff datasets in #2585
    • mcviewtest now spawns mcplotdiff-html automatically by @willend in #2568
  • New tools mccoplot-html/mccoplot-pyqtgraph/mccoplot-matplotlib: companion to mcplotdiff, overlaying two (or more) datasets' 1D monitors on the same axes for direct curve comparison by @willend in #2587, with n-way overlay support in #2594 and a McXtrace-side fix in #2589
  • mctest: added -s/--seed option and an option to emulate McCode's classic "Unix epoch" default seed, for reproducible test runs by @willend in #2575, #2576
  • mctest: new --strict mode fails a test if an instrument is missing its %Example: header line(s) by @willend in #2602 (spillover-bug fix in #2604), plus general robustness improvements in #2603 and a GPU-box-specific fix in #2613
  • mctest: fixed TypeError on re-runs caused by displaytime never being restored from the saved JSON state by @mads-bertelsen-agentic in #2624
  • mcplot-html: added a slider to control plot iframe size, and geometry/scaling adjustments, by @willend in #2547, #2548, #2549, #2550
  • Fix issue #2561 — make 2D-plot colourbars visible in more cases by @willend in #2563
  • Speed up execution of mcplot-matplotlib (especially for large 2D matrices) by @willend in #2570
  • Matplotlib-plotters: fix for non-draggable legends by @willend in #2614
  • mcrun/mxrun: allow multiscan -M with list-scan -L and new scan/list syntax par=a:delta:b for both -N and L modes by @willend in #2618
  • Plottable mccode.dat in the NeXus-scan case by @willend in #2619
  • mcgui/mxgui: non-numeric entries in nsteps are now deferred to mcrun for interpretation instead of rejected up front by @willend in #2625
  • mcdoc: list %Example: lines in bold by @willend in #2636
  • Minor tweak on mcviewtest — tolerate a trailing / in ref path by @willend in #2593

Code generator & grammar

  • RNG correctness fix: the KISS generator's 7-word per-particle random state was only partially backed up/restored across a SPLIT loop (silently corrupting RNG state), and the Mersenne-Twister seed was never actually applied at start-up due to a stale RNG_ALG check — both fixed by @mads-bertelsen-agentic in #2620
  • Cogen: simplify COPY(instance) to no longer transfer EXTEND et al. by @willend in #2627 (two affected instruments updated in #2640)
  • Enable mcstas-antlr in McCode GitHub CI by @willend in #2610
  • Edits for increased compatibility with mcstas-antlr by @willend in #2612
  • Consequence-edits from antlr-compatibility: add missing pragmas by @willend in #2616
  • Add input parameters to base .py instrument generated by mccode-pygen by @willend in #2601
  • Implement pygen-suggestion from @MilanKlausz (#2554) by @willend in #2555
  • Fix for collision between stdlib:: syntax and mcrun min:delta:max scan syntax by @willend in #2626
  • Fix issue #2606 + other unneeded use of GETPATH() by @willend in #2609
  • [Ref] move static comparison out of the hot TRACE path by @g5t in #2591 — a good general reminder that a WHEN(...) clause runs once per particle, so precomputing a flag in INITIALIZE beats a strcmp() in TRACE

Infrastructure / build system / CI

  • New CMake FetchContent integration for Greg Tucker's mcstas-chopper-lib by @willend in #2631, with a test instrument added in #2632
  • Consolidate conda/non-conda 'basictest' workflows and use with new mcviewtest by @willend in #2577
  • Minor bugfixes for testsuite-workflows/nightlies by @willend in #2578, #2581
  • Back to 1e6, testsuite workers are killed by time-limit by @willend in #2582
  • Let testsuite run with 2 cores on macOS, auto elsewhere by @willend in #2583
  • Use mpi=2 on macOS also in basictests by @willend in #2586
  • Include GitHub worker id as unique identifier for datasets by @willend in #2598
  • Trigger 'RUNALL' if > 4 comps were changed by @willend in #2641
  • Suppress use of cif2hkl in Test_Powders by @willend in #2634
  • Repair 'autobuild' download of 'innosetup' installer by @willend in #2573
  • Release doc updates 3.7.9 by @willend in #2545
  • Update pull_request_template.md by @willend in #2559
  • Update notebook template to reflect McStasScript 0.0.89 properties by @willend in #2580
  • CI: various workflow fixes by @willend in #2615
  • Minor instrument header fixes + plug missing README.md's by @willend in #2639
  • Rectification of Windows batch-wrappers by @willend in #2566, #2567

McStas only

  • New instrument: import of FRMII_SPODI / FRMII_SPODI_MULTI, a powder diffractometer at MLZ Garching (contributed by V. Kochetov, C. Hauf, M. Hoelzel and A. Senyshyn) by @kinetik161 in #2608 — enabled to run on GPU/OpenACC by @willend in #2623
  • New instruments: import of 3 x imaging instruments from various sources (PSI_ICON, Radiography_Lithium_Battery, Radiography_Sword) by @willend in #2569
  • New components (via mcstas-chopper-lib, see FetchContent integration above): Masked_ESS_butterfly and NXdisk_chopper, with their test/example instruments Masked_ESS_butterfly_image, NXdisk_chopper_display and NXdisk_chopper_image, courtesy of @g5t's mcstas-chopper-lib — installed directly into the normal mcstas-comps/contrib and examples/Tests_optics locations, so they appear in mcdoc/mcgui like any other McStas component
  • PowderN: remove erroneous order parameter by @Lomholy in #2622
  • Sans spheres intensity fix by @Lomholy in #2600
  • ILL_SALSA: fix linter and add n reflections to parameters by @Lomholy in #2572
  • Patch issue #2637 — Vertical_Bender gravity always disabled by @MilanKlausz in #2638
  • Union: add nowritefile parameter to all Union loggers and abs_loggers by @mads-bertelsen-agentic in #2607
  • Work on ESS source description / comparison with MCPL inputs by @willend in #2596
  • Fix for compilation failure of ESS/MCPL instrument under openacc by @willend in #2597
  • Use filenames in MCPL instrument Monitor_nD instances to get rid of timestamps by @willend in #2574
  • Add another MCPL_output -> producing neutrons in instrument coordinate frame by @willend in #2629
  • MCPL file was moved - update instrument file by @willend in #2630

McXtrace only

New Contributors

Full Changelog: v3.7.9...v3.8.2

Contributors

g5t, willend, and 4 other contributors
Assets 2
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