BPM Summer 2016 preview

The Summer 2016 BPM machine image contains many updated packages. The current machine is a *preview* for testing functionality, not for research or instruction.

You can download the machine image from Box.

Some notable changes from Spring 2015:

Default username

The default user is no longer 'oski'. It has changed to 'ubuntu'. As before, commands that require elevated privileges can be executed via sudo and without a password.

Python

Python 3.5 is now the default Python (from 2.7). The 3.x series has some backwards-incompatible changes, and existing Python 2 scripts might require updating. See major changes introduced by Python 3. The 'print' and 'text vs. data' sections are probably the most important to read and understand.

Python 2.7 is also installed as a conda environment. To activate this version in a terminal session:

 source activate py27

This command will make Python 2.7 the active Python in that terminal window. Other terminal windows remain at 3.5.

Jupyter notebooks

The ipython notebook has been replaced with the jupyter notebook, which means you can now create notebooks using Python (3.5 or 2.7) or R. To start:

 jupyter notebook

Opensesame

The version of Opensesame is now 3.1 (formerly 0.27). Inline scripts use Python 3.5, and the expyriment and psychopy backends are not available. Look for it under Applications > Programming or run 'opensesame' at the command line.

PyCharm

For those interested in an IDE for Python, you can try PyCharm.

version.txt

The BPM version is stored as a string in the BPM_VERSION environment variable. The version.txt file on the default user's desktop has been removed from the BPM.

display_acq

The display_acq utility is little-used and has been removed as an installable bpm-update target.