GUI v0.6.0 - test binaries now available

[Josh Siegle]

Hi everyone,

We are excited to announce that version 0.6.0 of the Open Ephys GUI is now ready for more widespread testing. This is probably the biggest update in the GUI's history, and includes a wide array of new features inspired by feedback from users and developers.

A complete list of changes can be found here. We recommend reading these through to get a better sense of what to expect when you start using the new version.

We are hoping to make v0.6.0 the default in February or March. Until then, we are looking for feedback on any and all aspects of the software. Our (ambitious) goal is to eliminate all sources of crashes. This has been very challenging previously because of inconsistencies between different plugins, which were developed by a variety of people over the course of many years. Now, we have cleaned up almost every part of the source code to ensure that plugins use the same conventions under the hood, while also removing any features that added unnecessary complexity.

The source code for v0.6.0 is available here, and executables are available as .zip files for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Plugins, configs, and shared libraries are saved in a separate location from earlier versions of the GUI, so using these binaries should not interfere with your existing signal chain.

If you're using the test binaries and you encounter a crash, please send your signal chain XML file and activity.log file to sup...@open-ephys.org, so we can figure out what went wrong.

There are some plugins we've temporarily removed, which will be added to the Plugin Installer before the official release: Spike Sorter, Event Triggered Average, Pulse Pal Output, and Intan Recording Controller. If you need these plugins to test your standard signal chain, please let us know.

Thanks in advance to everyone who is able to help us with testing! We will be frequently updating the test binaries in response to feedback over the coming weeks, with different release candidates marked as "rc1", "rc2", etc. Let us know if you'd like to be kept up-to-date regarding these changes.

Best,

Josh, Pavel, and Anjal