[Ifeffit] Query: Demeter

[Matthew Newville]

Hi Robbie,

Thanks for the question. There was a source code update for Demeter to version 0.9.27 in July 2021.  Version 0.9.26 was released in February 2018.  This is the version most people are using because it has binary installers.  There has not been a lot of development in the past five years.

This has been something that several of us have discussed privately and was raised again last week in a meeting of Larch developers.   It is very hard to install natively on a Mac (even with the great effort of MacPorts), and in my experience can be challenging to install on Linux.  The tools used (wxPerl, in particular) are just not well-supported or developed.

We have been trying to encourage a migration from Demeter to Larch and the Larix GUI for a couple of years.   Reluctance to change is understandable, and Larch/Larix are different from Athena/Artemis – what started as “viewing data at my beamline” eventually morphed into basically trying to cover all of Athena and most of Artemis in a single application.   I think we have a decent overlap in features between the GUIs so that most things are either “familiar” or even “almost the same”, and some things might even be marginally better.   I think that with Larch and Python, we can have a somewhat more sustainable and vibrant ecosystem.

There have been several bug reports, patches, suggestions, and advice on how to make Larch and Larix better from many people, and we are working on these.  I just got a list of things to fix in the Larix GUI from a few different people in the APS XAS group.    If you or anyone else would like to send me a list of complaints about features or requests,   please feel free to do so (including Larix session files is helpful!).  Submitting issues on GitHub is also fine (and if you want to add any fixes, that is welcome too!).   I try to answer these reports.  I’ll admit to not always being able to keep up ;).

We also have a monthly meeting of interested people discussing these topics.   If you or anyone here would like to be included in the invitation to the monthly meeting or would like to have a Zoom meeting sometime in the next few months, let me know.

But I think it is fine to discuss this topic here too.

--Matt


From: Ifeffit <ifeffit-bounces at millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov> on behalf of Robbie Taylor <Robbie.Taylor at mmu.ac.uk>
Date: Wednesday, January 24, 2024 at 2:21 PM
To: ifeffit at millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov <ifeffit at millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov>
Subject: [Ifeffit] Query: Demeter
Good Afternoon,

Hope you are well!

Please could you advise when Demeter was last updated? And if it is still in active development / regularly bug fixed?

Best wishes,
Robbie Taylor (he/him) | Software Officer – Vendor Management | IT & Digital | Manchester Metropolitan University
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