Hi everyone,

GSAS-II has had a significant reorganization “under the hood” (or “under the 
bonnet” depending on your style of English). The goal of this was to bring the 
structure of the directories into the standard way that Python software is 
organized, which allows GSAS-II to be installed like other GSAS-II packages. 
This will be advantageous for sites that install GSAS-II on a central software 
server, such as ORNL and BNL as they will be able to use standard tools. It 
should also be helpful for people using GSAS-II as a scripting environment or 
incorporating parts of GSAS-II into their own software. My hope is that it will 
have very minor impact on most users. The old version was maintained in branch 
called “master” and the new one was started several months back as “main”. As 
of today, “main” is now the default and “master” is being retired. If you have 
problems, please do report them.

If you installed GSAS-II from one of the gsas2full installers, when you next 
update to the latest GSAS-II version you will get version 5806. (This is the 
last update and version number for “master”). When you ask for the next update 
after 5806, you should automatically be switched to the “main” branch, which 
will also update shortcuts and install some Python packages. If you are 
installing GSAS-II in the future, please use the gsas2main installers (rather 
than the older gsas2full ones). This is documented in the installation 
instructions.

While there are many hundreds of changes between “main” and “master,” one that 
is most likely to be noticed are that GSAS-II now has two types of version 
numbers. When we developed in svn, a consecutive number (that started with 1) 
was assigned for every change to the code. When we moved to GitHub, we 
continued using consecutive numbering of versions, but only incremented the 
number when a significant change was made. Automatic build systems want version 
numbers in the form x.y.z so version 5806 is now also noted as version v5.3.0. 
Minor changes that warrant a change to the consecutive version number will be 
noted by a change in the final digit of the new version number (e.g. v5.3.0 to 
v5.3.1) while more major changes will be noted by changing the second digit 
v5.3.x to v5.4.0). Nothing warranting going from v5 to v6 is planned, at least 
not at present.

Another change that might affect users is that previously a file named 
GSASII.py was used to start the GUI. This had to be changed due to a naming 
conflict, so the file used to start GSAS-II is now G2.py. This will break 
shortcuts used to start GSAS-II, but should be addressed by the update process. 
A major addition is that GSAS-II now has scripts on GitHub that create the 
self-installers and build binaries (now using meson). There are also testing 
routines there, so we have a better chance to know when a change introduces a 
bug in the computations (not alas in the GUI) or the binaries/self-installers 
have problems. Many more details about the changes are listed here: 
https://urldefense.us/v3/__https://advancedphotonsource.github.io/GSAS-II-tutorials/master2main.html__;!!G_uCfscf7eWS!bvu1NNNEv5Ec6lr7o-Mg4HopJVJ33Bc0Rc7VTk3EFfRHqfhK0XNqKIsitEILCTM3rX3Kvh7nngVk94A$
 

Shoutouts on this transition go to Jerome Keiffer (ESRF) for meson and 
especially to Tom Caswell (BNL) who helped considerably.

Brian
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