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VStar development releases

mpyat2
Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Mon, 04/11/2022 - 08:15

VStar continues to evolve between official releases. New features are being added, bugs are fixed (hopefully, new bugs appear at a slower rate).

If you want to try the latest VStar, please visit the link below.

This is a link to my Google Drive folder with the latest 'development' builds.

VStarWinSetup-X.YZ.A-dev.zip is the zipped Windows installer. It contains the main program and all available plugins.

vstar-win.zip is a bunch of files for manual installation if someone prefers this way (no plug-ins!)

vstar-bash.zip, vstar-plugins.zip: compiled VStar and plugins for Linux-based systems (in fact, the only difference between Linux and Windows versions is the way to lunch the application, all other files are the same)

The link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11cn9BczDHmLFZEyCIQx6wKzfmOnhzhHf?usp=sharing

Clear skies,

Max

David Benn
Affiliation
Astronomical Society of South Australia (ASSAU)
Mon, 05/02/2022 - 15:04
Running vstar-bash on Mac

Thanks for this Max. It's worth nothing that the VStar.sh script from vstar-bash.zip can be used to run VStar from a Mac OS X Terminal window as well.

Peter Bealo
Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Mon, 05/02/2022 - 19:45
Great news Max,

I don't see…

Great news Max,

I don't see any notes in the zip files regarding what's new and how to use new features. Is anything available?

Peter

 

 

mpyat2
Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Tue, 05/03/2022 - 17:59
Hi Peter,I've just created…

Hi Peter,

I've just created a new build (see 2022-05-03 folder) and included the "Changes since the last release" file with a very rough description of what has been changed:

  • HJD Converter plug-in updated (issue 76), the problem with BJD addressed.
  • Descriptive Statistics by Series plug-in renewed.
  • Fixes in Magnitude baseline shifter plug-in.
  • Renewed JD to Calendar date plug-in.
  • New plug-in "New Sar from VeLa model" (still not documented)
  • Windows installer makes a better check for Java bitness (32 or 64 bit) and sets JVM memory sizes accordingly.
  • B-V plug-in fixes.
  • Many small fixes

Probably David can add more details.

Cheers,

Max

David Benn
Affiliation
Astronomical Society of South Australia (ASSAU)
Thu, 05/05/2022 - 13:48
Issues in latest snapshot

Thanks for the change list above Max.

Peter, we provide a detailed ChangeLog.txt with a formal release. It's hard to believe that it's been almost a year since the last formal release! Another one won't be too far away I suspect.

For the snapshot releases being made available in Max's Google Drive, one approach is to look at the date of the snapshot, then to look at the sorted (in reverse order by update) closed GitHub issues:

  https://github.com/AAVSO/VStar/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aclosed+sort%3Aupdated-desc+

A more detailed log of changes can be found here:

  https://github.com/AAVSO/VStar/commits/master

David

mpyat2
Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Sun, 11/06/2022 - 09:09
The last development snapshot

The Windows installer, vstar-win.zip, and vstar-plugins.zip for the last development snapshot have been added.

See a link in the pinned message, 2022-11-06 folder.

  • VStarWinSetup-2.22.1-dev.zip is a zipped executable installer It contains both the VStar core and the complete set of plug-ins.
  • vstar-win.zip is a bunch of files for manual installation if someone prefers this way.
  • vstar-plugins.zip is a bunch of plig-ins for manual installation.

Clear skies,

Max

David Benn
Affiliation
Astronomical Society of South Australia (ASSAU)
Tue, 11/08/2022 - 09:45
bash and mac

The vstar-bash.zip and vstar-mac.dmg are there now also.

You can see what issues have been worked on in this snapshot here: https://github.com/AAVSO/VStar/projects/1

See the Done column. In particular, issue #294 addresses a Fourier model creation bug that made it into the last release in which specifying a perfectly reasonable fundamental frequency generated an error.

David

mpyat2
Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Sun, 01/01/2023 - 11:05
The last development snapshot: the first snapshot in the 2023!

Hi folks,

Happy New Year to all of you! Good luck, happiness, and many successful observations!

I've generated the fresh Windows installer and ZIPs for the manual installation under Windows.

You can find them in the folder "2023-01-01" at the link https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11cn9BczDHmLFZEyCIQx6wKzfmOnhzhHf?usp=share_link

See also the pinned message.

Clear skies,

Max

mpyat2
Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Fri, 05/05/2023 - 17:12
Development release on 05 May 2023

I've added Windows Installer with the latest development release: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pMgAXMMulwOdaEkiTqwOjotsNamPgk_I?usp=share_link

It contains bug fixes, as usual, and the improved Gaia DR2/DR3 plug-in, the extended ASAS-SN plug-in (with the ability to read Sky Patrol V2.0 [http://asas-sn.ifa.hawaii.edu/skypatrol/]), and a new ZTF plug-in.

vstar-bash.zip for Linux/Mac and  vstar-plugins.zip can be found here: https://github.com/AAVSO/VStar/releases/tag/snapshot

David Benn
Affiliation
Astronomical Society of South Australia (ASSAU)
Sat, 05/06/2023 - 10:22
Snapshot Releases

Thanks Max.

I might create a sticky post about the existence of snapshot releases in general now, resulting from work on this issue:

  https://github.com/AAVSO/VStar/issues/340 

As Max says above:

vstar-bash.zip for Linux/Mac and  vstar-plugins.zip can be found here:

  https://github.com/AAVSO/VStar/releases/tag/snapshot

The text you'll see there is as follows:

This is the latest snapshot release created from the master branch.

Anything released from this branch should be considered stable in principle since changes come from pull requests and all unit tests will have run and passed before code is merged to master.

This gives early access to new features, bug fixes, and plugins. It's also considered a best practice in software development. A side benefit is that it reduces the pressure on generally busy volunteers to make frequent formal releases of VStar. :) Nevertheless, formal releases are still important due to additional system testing, release notes, and documentation updates.

Archives for Windows (vstar-win.zip) and any operating system with a bash shell (vstar-bash.zip), e.g. Linux & MacOS, are automatically added to the daily release, along with the latest plug-ins archive. The Windows installer and MacOS X DMG archive are not currently created in a snapshot release automatically.

You may see that the snapshot release badge on https://github.com/AAVSO/VStar currently indicates a failing status. This is a temporary artefact.

David

mpyat2
Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Thu, 05/02/2024 - 20:27
Post-2.24.0 development release

Hi folks,

 

I've uploaded a fresh snapshot here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VNPcf2V_Z227wS3k7Id_wQxnygJK72DD?usp=drive_link

(Windows installer plus vstar-win.zip and vstar-plugins.zip)

Among other improvements/fixes, it contains the fixed Gaia plug-in: since the last stable release, the Gaia Web interface was changed, and the plug-in stopped working.

Now it is fixed.

 

Best regards,

Max