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Bonsai 2.8
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@glopesdev glopesdev released this 30 Jul 22:14
· 248 commits to main since this release
2.8.0
680f6aa

This is the first release in the 2.8 series and one of the most significant in the last couple of years.

Critical parts of the compiler, IDE and bootstrapper have been rewritten to allow evolving the infrastructure into the new cross-platform .NET core. We have made the editor and language learning experience more accessible by providing support for rich rendering of Markdown annotations and embedded documentation for all operators. Finally, we have established the Bonsai Foundation, an independent organization to support our commitment to a free and open-source future, and to the benefit of our growing community.

Embedded code annotations and documentation

Code comments are an essential part of any programming language, and Bonsai is no exception. As the complexity of projects increases, and knowledge needs to be transferred across generations of scientists, it becomes more important to have effective ways of sharing information about how the internals of specific workflows work.

image

This release introduces a new Annotation operator, which can be placed on its own or attached to any node, and where you can write your own development notes or operating instructions in Markdown to be saved with the workflow. Being a visual language, we think that having the ability to write-down rich HTML annotations, potentially with images or schematics, will be an important feature of Bonsai code comments. Markdown provides a great compromise between ease-of-use, flexibility and rich HTML support, which is leveraged by the new built-in browser panel which has also been co-opted to display embedded documentation.

Fully-featured Linux editor

We've been progressively cleaning up the kinks in cross-platform support of the current Bonsai editor (Mono .NET framework) and we now can run the editor with full-functionality (i.e. cameras, OpenGL, sound, serial ports) in latest Ubuntu, Arch Linux and Raspberry Pi. By taking advantage of VS Code on Linux it even becomes possible to use C# scripting directly.

We have documented the installation steps in detail and removed most crippling crashes and painful limitations around Bonsai on Mono. All the functionality required to run our tutorials and learning materials should now be available to any Linux system.

Announcing the Bonsai Foundation

We are welcoming our first new code contributors (@bruno-f-cruz), and announcing the Bonsai Foundation as part of our commitment to make Bonsai a free, open-source, and sustainable community-driven project. The primary role of the Foundation is to organize the development of the Bonsai ecosystem, and facilitate the sharing of contributions between individuals and organizations who want to volunteer their work for community projects. We hope that by establishing clear contribution guidelines, and improving access to freely available teaching materials, documentation, conferences and summer courses, we can empower current and future generations of scientists anywhere in the world to use this free and open-source programming language.

We hope you will join us in our journey!

What's Changed

New Contributors

Full Changelog: 2.7.2...2.8.0

Contributors

glopesdev and bruno-f-cruz
Assets 4
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