Help Test a Release Candidate

Current Release Candidate: None at the moment. Thanks though.

If you are interested in helping us test a release candidate before a full release, thank you! It's very helpful to have people try out the installation and execution on a variety of systems to track down any problems that the developers' systems and the CI systems didn't catch. Especially if you have an unusual python distro or an unusual C++ compiler, we would very much like to hear of any build problems that may turn up, which we may not have seen yet.

We also try to ensure that the public API is preserved, but if you use any elements of GalSim in a way that we didn't anticipate, it's possible for us to break things that aren't in the unit tests or example scripts. So if you can test the new version on any code that you care about to ensure it still works, that would be fabulous.

Here are a few things you can do:

1. Try pip installing it:

pip install -e git://github.com/GalSim-developers/GalSim.git@v2.3.0-rc.2#egg=galsim

or

pip install git+https://github.com/GalSim-developers/GalSim.git@v2.3.0-rc.2#egg=galsim

2. Try running the unit tests:

This will require completion of step 1. Also you will need some additional packages given here: https://github.com/GalSim-developers/GalSim/blob/releases/2.3/test_requirements.txt.

git clone -b v2.3.0-rc.2 git@github.com:GalSim-developers/GalSim.git
cd tests
pytest

Or, for the last line, if you prefer

nosetests

3. Try running the demo scripts:

git clone -b v2.3.0-rc.2 git@github.com:GalSim-developers/GalSim.git
cd GalSim/examples
./check_yaml

Note: Demo 13 now requires having the two COSMOS catalogs downloaded, so if you haven't done that, the above will fail with a message saying to download them. We generally recommend installing into some directory in your home page or maybe a scratch disk, rather than use the default (which will install into the GalSim installation directory). E.g. On my laptop, I use the following:

galsim_download_cosmos -s 23.5 -d ~/share
galsim_download_cosmos -s 25.2 -d ~/share

After reinstalling GalSim, you will need to rerun those commands, but that will just involve updating a symlink, not re-downloading anything.

4. Try out your own favorite script that uses GalSim to make sure things still seem to work correctly.

5. Look through the v2.3 docs for errors, misspellings, etc.

From the GalSim repo clone main directory:

git clone -b v2.3.0-rc.2 git@github.com:GalSim-developers/GalSim.git
open GalSim/docs/_build/html/index.html

That's for a Mac. On other systems, the command may be different. Or just point your browser to that file location.

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If you have any problems, please let us know in any of the following ways (whichever is most convenient for you):

• Reply on the Slack thread where I solicited help for testing the release candidate
• Slack direct message (e.g. in DES or LSST or Roman Slack workspaces) @mjarvis
• Email michael [at] jarvis.net
• Open an issue at https://github.com/GalSim-developers/GalSim/issues/new