pylabrad is an interface to the LabRAD system in python with support for both clients and servers. For general information about the LabRAD system/protocol see the labrad repository and associated wiki. For help getting started and understanding pylabrad take a look at the wiki.

As of version 0.96.0, pylabrad is no longer compatible with the Delphi labrad manager available from Sourceforge. Instead, use the new scalabrad manager. The user interface for the manager and node along with the registry editor and grapher is now web-based (scalabrad-web).

In addition to the basic labrad client/server support, this package also includes a tool called the "node" server in the labrad.node package. This server just runs other labrad servers, allowing you to start and stop them by sending labrad requests to the node. By running node servers on one or more machines connected to labrad, you can remotely control which labrad servers are running on those machines. This can be very useful in distributed setups. For more information, including required configuration in the LabRAD registry (to, e.g., define directories containing servers), see the node docstring. The node module is executable, so you should launch it with python -m labrad.node. To see documentation of the available command-line parameters run python -m labrad.node --help.

For instructions on how to contribute to pylabrad, see contributing.md.

New code should have tests, and changes to existing code should not break existing tests. To run the test suite, you'll need to have pytest installed, then run py.test from the command line when in the pylabrad directory.

Packages for pylabrad are distributed through PyPI. The best way to install pylabrad is using pip: pip install pylabrad. If installing using git and including in PYTHONPATH, note that versions 0.95.0 or later require the futures python package.

For contributors who need to build and upload new packages, do the following:

• Tag the release. Create a git tag with the version number, e.g. git tag 1.0.0. You'll also want to push this tag to make it official: git push origin 1.0.0.
• Build packages. Make sure you have a clean local tree (no pending changes beyond the tag) and then build the packages: source dist_build.sh. Packages will be built in the dist/ directory and you should take a look to make sure the version number was found properly.
• Upload to PyPI. Run the provided script to upload packages: source dist_upload.sh. This requires the twine package to ensure that the connection to PyPI is secure, so you may need to install it locally first: pip install twine. Of course, you'll need a PyPI account that has permissions to update the pylabrad package.

This repo was moved from the martinisgroup organization. To tell git to pull updates from the new location, you'll want to update the 'origin' remote in your local repository. Use git remote -v to see the names and urls for all remotes you have defined, then git remote set-url to update the url, changing the organization to labrad:

$ git remote -v
origin	[email protected]:martinisgroup/pylabrad (fetch)
origin	[email protected]:martinisgroup/pylabrad (push)

$ git remote set-url origin [email protected]:labrad/pylabrad

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