Dear ALPS developers and users,
We have posted ALPS 2.0b1 on the web page. This is the first beta release of ALPS 2. It's main purpose is to provide a stable version to test on various platforms, and to provide feedback about installation and compilation issues. The libraries and applications should be at least as stable as version 1.3.4 was. Any potential issues should be due to dependencies on new libraries, a new build system, and support for more operating systems.
Download and installation instructions are posted at http://alps.comp-phys.org/mediawiki/index.php/Download_and_install_ALPS_2
Major new features are
- Use of HDF5 as binary file format for results, replacing XML for large data sets, as requested by power users. Specifying the option --write-xml with the applications will still write the old XML files in addition - Use of CMake as a new build system - Support for Windows, as requested by many users - Ready-made binary installers for MacOS X and Windows, as desired by many users. - More powerful Python based evaluation tools replacing the old XSLT based ones - Integration with the VisTrails workflow and provenance tool - A new DMFT application - Updated applications with new features - A new and more extensive set of tutorials (in progress).
This first beta release will also be used to finish development on the tutorials. Progress on tutorials and documentation will be seen on the Wiki over the coming six weeks. Another beta release 2.0b2 is planned for early July, containing new features, improved documentation and tutorials and numerous improvements (and probably also bug fixes).
I would like to encourage all to download and install this beta release and report problems or provide feedback on the mailing list. We want to solve all installation issued before 2.0b2 comes out.
Besides all the ALPS developers I want to especially thank the following people who contributed major time to the development of new features in ALPS 2:
Bela Bauer Sebastian Fuchs Lukas Gamper Jan Gukelberger Emanuel Gull Ryo Igarashi Tama Ma Olivier Parcollet Brigitte Surer Synge Todo
as well as from the VisTrails team:
Juliana Freire David Koop Emanuele Santos Claudio Silva
For the ALPS team,
Matthias Troyer