Dear users and developers,
in preparation for the NEST 3.10 release, the pre-release version NEST 3.10-rc1 https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/releases/tag/v3.10_rc1 is now available for testing.
This long-awaited release changes the inner structure by removing the legacy simulation language interface (SLI) layer and promoting PyNEST as primary user interface. People already using NEST via Python will benefit from the cleaner function calls, /without any changes necessary to their code/. Depending on the model setup, instantiation of large models may be noticeably faster.
Additionally to the traditional install methods, the new version will be available in an unoptimized, non-MPI version via "pip install nest-simulator" once the release is complete. Due to a quirk in the process the pre-release version however is currently not installable with the usual "--pre" flag. If you want to test the pre-release version use `pip install nest-simulator==3.10rc1` as a workaround for now (we "yanked" the rc-version from PyPI).
Note that pre-releases are not fully tested and will be removed after the actual release is complete, so don't base your work on it.
Let us know about your experience! We'd be happy to hear where we can improve, and even happier to hear if you're happy.
If everything goes well, we're looking forward to the full release in the coming days and will announce it accordingly.
Best, Dennis
https://github.com/nest/nest-simulator/releases/tag/v3.10_rc1