CPL News and status

Latest News

CPL 6.6 is now available - The latest version of CPL has been released and is available for download

Release Notes for CPL 6.6

This is a maintenance release fixing a few known problems, and provides some extensions which were needed to support new instruments.

Release Notes for CPL 6.5.1

This is a maintenance release fixing a few known problems, and provides some extensions which were needed to support new instruments.

Release Notes for CPL 6.4.1

This release extends the functionality of CPL and fixes a few known bugs. It also deprecates a few interfaces which will be removed in CPL 7.

Among the enhancements are functions to reject special values in an image, support for bitwise operations on integer images, a function to fill a region of an image with a constant value, functions to retrieve type and unit from a WCS object.

Support for a short integer column save type has been added.

Support for frame set iterators to allow for threadsafe sequential access to frame sets has been added.

Further details can be found in the NEWS file shipped as part of the distribution.

Release Notes for CPL 6.3

This release extends the functionality of CPL and fixes a few known bugs. It also deprecates a few interfaces which will be removed in CPL 7.

The enhancements are a new function to sum vector elements, new filters for filtering images, new options for CPL_FILTER_MEDIAN, and support for CPL_TYPE_LONG_LONG table columns.

Further details can be found in the NEWS file shipped as part of the distribution.

Release Notes for CPL 6.2

This is a maintenance release for CPL 6.1.1 which fixes a few known bugs, and adds a few new functions which were missing in the previous release.

Most notably the bug fixes address the compilation problems on Mac OS X 10.8 using the clang compiler, and an issue of the median computation in the case of even numbered samples.

Further details can be found in the NEWS file shipped as part of the distribution.

Release Notes for CPL 6.1.1

This is a patch release for CPL 6.0 containing bug fixes and some new functions.

Release Notes for CPL 6.0

This is a major release where the API of some CPL functions has changed. Furthermore, several new routines have been added for new functionality or for improving existing CPL routines. And, again some functions have been deprecated, which means that they're still there but will most likely disappear with the next major release of CPL.
This is also the first version of CPL supporting multi-threaded recipes (via OMP).
A detailed list of all these changes is contained in the file NEWS in the main CPL directory.

Release Notes for CPL 5.3.1

This is a patch release for CPL 5.2.0 containing bug fixes and some new functions. See the Changelog file for more details.

Release Notes for CPL 5.2.0

This is a patch release for CPL 5.1.0 containing bug fixes and some new functions. See the file NEWS in the main CPL dir. for more details.

Release Notes for CPL 5.1.0

This is not a major release of CPL - no API changes wrt CPL 5.0 took place. Several new routines have been added for new functionality or for improving existing CPL routines. And, also, several functions have been deprecated, which means that they're still there but will most likely disappear with the next major release of CPL.
A detailed list of all these changes is contained in the file NEWS in the main CPL directory.

Release Notes for CPL 5.0.0

This is a major release where the API of some CPL functions has changed. Furthermore, several new routines have been added for new functionality or for improving existing CPL routines. Thus, also several functions have been deprecated, which means that they're still there but will most likely disappear with the next major release of CPL.
A detailed list of all these changes is contained in the file NEWS in the main CPL directory.
With CPL 5.0.0 we also upgraded to the version 3 of the CFITSIO FITS library (currently CFITSIO 3.0.9).

Release Notes for CPL 4.2.0

This is not a major release, so the API of all CPL functions remain unchanged with respect to CPL 4.1.0 .
Much work went into fixing bugs reported by the community, adding functionality, and providing tools supporting the creation of pipeline recipes with CPL.
In particular:
More accessor functions for WCSLIB were implemented (as needed in the VISTA pipeline) in the cpl_wcs module, built on the original code kindly provided by Jim Lewis of the VISTA group in the UK.
The functions supporting the implementation of unit tests for pipelines have been extended. For debugging purposes a basic set of plotting utilities were added.
New polynomial fitting functions for images and imagelists have been added.
New pattern matching algorithm has been added.

Release Notes for CPL 4.1.0

This is not a major release, so the API of all CPL functions remain unchanged with respect to CPL 4.0.1 .
Much work went into optimization of algorithms, improvements of robustness of the CPL code, and standardisation of internal structures, e.g. for propertylists.
In particular:
The usage of WCSLIB (optionally) was added, and wrappers for important functions of that library were implemented via the cpl_wcs module which was kindly provided by Jim Lewis of the VISTA group in the UK.
The functions handling the extended memory functionality have been cleaned up and all problems concerning the size of internal tables have been fixed, memory mode can now be chosen at run-start.
A set of routines supporting standardised unit testing has been included, which should help in building the required unit tests for pipelines.
New warping and fitting functions have been added.
New utility functions have been added to the table subsystem of CPL.

Release Notes for CPL 4.0.1

The following modifications are included in this patch:
- support unsigned short integers as table elements
- correct a problem in cpl_property_load(), and cpl_property_load_regexp()
- fix a bug in the image/table saving function, e.g. cpl_dfs_image_save()
- fix memory management for very long messages in the cpl_msg functions

Release Notes for CPL 4.0

The I/O library for accessing data in FITS format used by CPL has been changed. In order to be synchronized with the VLT software we switched from qfits to CFITSIO (same version as VLT, i.e. CFITSIO release 2.510).

The CPL error state has been extended from a single CPL error to a sequence of such errors which improves error recovery and error reporting. The new CPL errorstate functions are defined in the cpl_errorstate module.

The CPL DFS module has been extended with functions for creating DFS compliant FITS products.

In CPL 3.X a number of CPL accessor functions take a const pointer to a CPL object and return a non-const pointer to a part of the CPL object, i.e.
double * cpl_vector_get_data(const cpl_vector *);
Such functions could be used in code that would indirectly modify a CPL object that has been declared constant, and such code would not cause any compiler warnings. To avoid this, the const modifier on the pointer to the CPL object has been dropped from these functions. An example of such a redeclaration in CPL 4.0 is:
double * cpl_vector_get_data(cpl_vector *);
To accomodate the need for read-only accessors, a number of new To accomodate the need for read-only accessors, a number of new constant-accessors have been defined, i.e.
const double * cpl_vector_get_data_const(const cpl_vector *);

History

The following is an archive of items in reverse chronological order.

CPL version 2.1.2 released - (24-Nov-2005)
The latest version of CPL has been released.

CPL version 2.1.1 released - (27-Oct-2005)
The latest version of CPL has been released.

EsoRex version v3.3.0 released - (15-Jun-2005)
A new version of EsoRex has been publicly released. This version fixes/improves environment variable handling.

CPL version 2.0 released - (08-Apr-2005)

Additionally, a new version of EsoRex has also been released to match the new CPL version. Documentation includes an updated User and Reference Manual.

The new version of CPL has a changed API, providing better organisation and more systematic nomenclature. It adds new functionality, and addresses deficiencies with the older version. For details of changes to CPL, please read the ChangeLog provided with the distribution.

EsoRex version v3.2.1 released - (08-Apr-2005)
A new version of EsoRex has been publicly released. This version has better memory handling and checking, improved error-message reporting, detection of multiple recipe instances and, of course, has been updated to work with CPL 2.x. For details, read the ChangeLog provided with the distribution. Note that due to the updated version, EsoRex will warn if it is being used with an older configuration file. As the current version is backwards compatible to versions 2.x, simply using the --create-config option may be used to update any existing configuration files.

EsoRex update v2.0.1 released - (27-Sep-2004)
A new version of EsoRex has been publicly released. This version makes a small change to the command line options, hence a new major version number. Additionally, it offers several improvements and fixes some minor problems. For details, read the ChangeLog provided with the distribution.

EsoRex publicly released - (01-Jul-2004)
The ESO Recipe Execution tool (EsoRex) is now publicly available. This tool allows CPL-based recipes to be run from the command line, providing all the infrastructure of product handling, command-line and configuration-file parameters, etc.. Full details are available from the EsoRex web page.

CPL v1.0.1 - (25-May-2004)
The first CPL patch is now available.

CPL Reference Manual - (06-May-2004)
The CPL Reference Manual is now available for download as a PDF from the "downloads" page. An online version of the manual is, of course, still available. Note that the CPL Reference Manual is several hundred pages!

CPL v1.0 - (17-Dec-2003)
The Common Pipeline Library is now available! Version 1.0 has now been approved by ESO for release, along with all the associated documentation.

CPL Public Website - (16-Dec-2003)
The CPL now has an official ESO website (http://www.eso.org/cpl/) which is accessable from the general Internet. Here it is possible to find information about the project, to download the source files and documentation, and to contact to the CPL team.

CPL Logo - (03-Dec-2003)
The CPL logo has been finalised. The design, the stylised letters "C", "P" and "L", symbolic of pipeline paths. The logo may be portrayed in either "ESO-blue" on white or vice versa. Official copies for download and inclusion in documentation may be obtained from the "download" page.

CPL beta-release - (29-Sep-2003)
The CPL beta release was made as of 29 September 2003. This will mean a temporary freeze in further code development, and all effort will concentrate on exhaustive testing and rectifying bugs. This is not yet a public release of the code, but rather an internal development stage.

CPL internal website created - (28-Sep-2003)
The CPL internal website was established on 28 September, 2003. A public website will be made available in time for the public release of the CPL software. The internal website is for the benefit of ESO's CPL developers and acts as a prototype for the public version.

CPL alpha-release - (15-Jun-2003)

CPL first internal release - (May-2002)

CPL project start - (Sep-2001)
M. Peron forms the CPL Project Team, comprising N. Devillard, Y. Jung, R. Palsa, C. Izzo, P. Ballester and C. Sabet. K Banse was appointed as mediator and chairman for overseeing the project.