[SAGA-RG] Saga-Python 0.9.2 Released

[Ole Weidner]

Dear All,

after several months of development we have released saga-python 0.9.2 today. You may wonder why we chose to make this big jump in the revision number from the previous 0.2.7 release to 0.9.2. There are several reasons for this:

(1) API CHANGES. We have made small changes to the API to reflect the official SAGA Python language bindings specification. These changes mostly affect naming of constants, like job states and flags and should be minimally disrupting for existing saga applications. 

(2) PROJECT NAME CHANGE. While the previous version was still released under the 'bliss' acronym ("Bliss is SAGA"), this version is consistently named and released as 'saga-python'. This includes the PyPi project[1] ("pip install saga-python), the Github repository[2] and the website[3]. The previous version ('bliss' 0.2.7) will still be available via PyPi ('pip install bliss') 

(3) CORE ARCHITECTURE IMPROVEMENTS: One of the most important changes in the 0.9.2 release is a completely re-engineered core architecture. It addresses several limitations that limited the scalability of saga-bliss and introduces an extended adaptor interface with support for asynchronous operations and bulk optimizations.

On the functional side, saga-python 0.9.2 currently supports the following middleware:

 * SSH and GSISSH
 * Condor and Condor-G
 * PBS and Torque
 * Sun Grid Engine
 * SLURM

We are also working on a clean re-implementation of the broken (GSI/S)FTP file-transfer capabilities found in previous versions. We are in the final testing phase and are planning to release the (GSI/S)FTP file adaptor within a week or two from now.

Last but not least, we have a new project website [3] and improved our documentation [4], including adaptor documentation and examples. 

Remember that if you don't want to switch to the new version of saga-python, you don't have to do anything, just stick with saga-bliss. However, be advised that we are not planning to update or maintain the 'bliss' branch in the future. 

We hope that this release contributes to the overall usability and future extensibility of saga-python and that the minor changes on API level are minimally disruptive for you and your project.

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns. If you give saga-python a try, please let us know what you think. We are particularly interested in missing functionality and obviously, bugs. The issue tracker can be found here [5]. Your feedback is always very much appreciated! 

With best regards,
The SAGA Team


[1] saga-python on PyPi: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/saga-python
[2] saga-python on GitHub: https://github.com/saga-project/saga-python
[3] saga-python website: http://saga-project.github.com/saga-python/
[4] saga-python documentation: http://saga-project.github.com/saga-python/doc/
[5] saga-python issue tracker: https://github.com/saga-project/saga-python/issues