McStas and McXtrace v3.5.0 releases

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Changes in McStas 3.5.0 and McXtrace 3.5.0 September 16th, 2024

McStas 3.5.0 is the sixth official release in the 3.x series, with a modernised
code-generator and support for GPU acceleration on NVIDIA cards.

Thanks:

• Thanks to all members of the joint McStas-McXtrace team and input from our
  users via emails and GitHub issues alike! Further a special thanks to
  Theodor Peter Guttesen (former DTU diploma student) who has helped modernise
  our 3D visualisation!

Important changes going forward:

• From release 3.5.0 McStas and McXtrace are released simultaneously and with
  the same versioning (meaning that McXtrace takes a jump from 3.2 up to 3.5)
• With release 3.5.0 we are officially dropping support for the "legacy"
  McStas 2.7.2 release and the "legacy" McXtrace 1.7.1 release.
• To minimize work required for platform support and builds, we are now focusing
  on fewer platforms:
  • Debian packages at packages.mccode.org are provided for x86_64 and arm64 Linux
    (Thanks to the work of Emmanuel Farhi and his team at SOLEIL, official Debian
    packages are already available in Debian Testing and Unstable
    (see https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/mccode) and should become
    widely available with next Debian Stable, after which we might drop our "own
    channel").
  • conda-forge is to become our distribution channel for "everything else", meaning
    that:
    1. Our macOS "bundles" are effectively now self-extracting conda-installers and
       REQUIRES an active internet connection during installation
    2. From a later release in the 3.5 series the same will be the case for Windows
    • We are dropping builds for ALL rpm-oriented platform. Please use conda-forge instead.
• We want to release more "early and often" going forward, see below under conda-forge.

Conda-forge:

• We are now officially on conda-forge, with feedstocks available at:
  • https://github.com/conda-forge/mcstas-suite-feedstock
  • https://github.com/conda-forge/mcxtrace-suite-feedstock
• Via conda-forge we support the platforms linux-64, linux-aarch64, osx-arm64, osx-64 and win-64
• The conda-forge win-64 packages have slight shortcomings for this first release, meaning that:
  • MCPL and NCrystal are not shipped with McStas
  • MCPL is not shipped with McXtrace
• We still provide cross-compiled installers for Windows (mingw builds) for now
• You will find that when installed via conda-forge, file locations are slightly different:
  most of the locations may be probed via (example from McStas)
  mcrun --showcfg=ITEM Print selected cfg item and exit (paths are resolved
  and absolute). Allowed values are "bindir", "libdir",
  "resourcedir", and "tooldir".
  (Wrt. locations of examples and components, the "resourcdir" is the same as $MCSTAS / $MCXTRACE)
• Going forward, we will add incremental releases in the 3.5-series as work happens on the
  main McStas/McXtrace branch - and this work will automatically go on our official
  conda-forge and Debian channels. Other distribution channels ("bulky installers etc.)
  may come with longer intervals.

Fixes of issues from last 3.x release:

• A number of issues from 3.4 were addressed, see the relevant GitHub issues for details:
  • https://github.com/McStasMcXtrace/McCode/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aclosed+label%3Amcstas-3.4
  • https://github.com/McStasMcXtrace/McCode/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aclosed+label%3Amcxtrace-3.2

For the full list of changes, please consult CHANGES_McStas and CHANGES_McXtrace!

We hope you will enjoy this new release!!!

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This discussion was created from the release McStas and McXtrace v3.5.0 releases.