Releases

A «release» is a way to bundle together a coherent set of data files in the instrument database. It is a common situation when designing an instrument that its characteristics keep changing, because of a variety of reasons (e.g., additional funding enables to use better hardware components, hardware tests permit to better characterize the instrument, etc.).

InstrumentDB keeps track of all the versions for each data file. This is vital to ensure the traceability of the characteristics of the instrument as well as a way to record its evolution. However, the presence of several versions for a data file can easily complicate things: if there are two versions A and B of a data file containing the noise characteristics of a detector, and three versions 1, 2, and 3 of the bandpass for the same detector, what should a simulation code use as input? Should it use (A, 1), (B, 1), (A, 2), or whatever else?

Release tags are a way to assign the same label to several data files, with the aim to mark them as different bits of information for the same design. They can be named using an unique identifier containing letters, numbers, the underscore and the dot. Good names are grant_proposal, v1.3, final, etc.