Curious About the Next Release Timeline

[abodh]

Just checking in to see if there are any plans for upcoming releases, or if the development team has a tentative release date in mind. I’m especially interested in updates for AltDSS-Python and dss_capi, since I have a few open issues and it would be helpful to have an idea of the timeline.

I have also seen some comments about improved documentation in the next release, which I am really looking forward to as well.

[PMeira]

Hi, @abodh,
Hopefully by next Saturday (I was on vacation + handling some IRL stuff). There are extensive changes.

I have also seen some comments about improved documentation in the next release

A first batch of doc updates is included in the next release. A second batch will land after a few weeks, maybe a month.

Note that there are some very recent changes from the EPRI codebase that we will not include yet, especially since those haven't been released and tested by the community yet, and they break backwards compatibility in several aspects.

[PMeira]

Right before the planned release, EPRI released a new OpenDSS version (v11).

Most things are handled and the main packages are almost ready (both the main DSS C-API library and our Python backends).
But... OpenDSS version v11 does introduce some changes that, almost not hard to port, break compatibility with a lot of .DSS scripts. Most of the related changes happened in the past December and January. Notably, the changes in these components:

• SwtControl:

  • Delay: it does nothing in the new version. There is no way to do delayed operations anymore.
  • RatedCurrent: new property, it does nothing.
  • allows unganged operation, controlling individual conductor states
  • API changes

• Fuse:

  • FuseCurve : no more default TCC Curve, previously tlink.
  • RatedCurrent: it does nothing in the new version.
  • CurveMultiplier: new property, it does what RatedCurrent used to do.
  • InterruptingRating: new property, it does nothing.
  • API changes

• Recloser and Relay: bunch of new properties (many renames); new unganged operation mode allows controlled individual conductor states. These seem OK, if we ignore a lot of unnecessary renames.

To be transparent, I don't like most of the changes for a series of reasons, ranging from design issues, UX, and compatibility. Having given it some thought, here's the plan:

• I'll undo some of the ported code related to these components, proceed with the test releases.
• Since we now support loading EPRI's engines, disable some of the API for the time being, when using this new version 11.
• In a later version, keep the old and new versions of the affected components. We did this before with InvControl/PVSystem/Storage. I checked public .DSS scripts and a lot that use Fuse and SwtControl would have changes in behavior without any error or waring. We cannot just adopt the new versions without an obvious migration plan.

Anyway, something should be out in a few days, and I'll work some days next week to handle remaining issues. It's Carnival here in Brazil, an extended holiday, so I should have plenty of time in the coming days.