Release Notes 1.5 Series

BALL 1.5.0

Changes since BALL 1.4.2

• Infrastructure:

  • New source code repositories for BALL and ball_contrib at GitHub: https://www.github.com/BALL-Project
  • Bug tracker moved to GitHub Issues
  • Wiki moved to GitHub wiki
  • BALL website major update: http://www.ball-project.org
  • Build archive and Jenkins CI server: https://abibuilder.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de

• BALL contrib:

  • Major update moving to CMake external project: https://www.github.com/BALL-Project/ball_contrib
  • Thus, a single contrib for all platforms

• Buildsystem:

  • Raised minimum required CMake version to 3.1.x
  • Cleanup of unused and outdated CMake code
  • Switch to modern CMake approaches, e.g. auto-generated BALL package configuration files
  • CMake option to switch from LGPL to GPL
  • Removed redundant CMake modules shipped with BALL
  • Removed redundant files from the build system

• Core:

  • Moved from Qt4 to Qt5. Minimum required version 5.6
  • Various fixes in Plugin handling
  • XML3D support
  • MOPAC initial file format support
  • Deprecated most BALL_* macros
  • Reworked PyInterpreter
  • Introduced PyServer
  • Quaternion class is now based on Eigen::Quaternion (was: boost::math::quaternion)

• VIEW:

  • Moved from Qt4 to Qt5. Minimum required version 5.6
  • Moved from Qt WebKit to WebEngine
  • Deprecated PyWidget (removed from BALLView)
  • Deprecated HelpViewer (removed from BALLView)

• Features:

  • CADDSuite and support for common tool description (CTD) command-line tools (https://dx.doi.org/10.1186%2F1758-2946-4-S1-O2)
  • PresentaBALL (https://doi.org/10.1109/BioVis.2013.6664344)
  • BALLaxy (https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btu574)
  • 2D fingerprint similarity methods (https://doi.org/10.1021/ci500150t)
  • RTfact real-time ray tracing available for Windows
  • Jupyter plugin
  • PyBall kernel for Jupyter

• Packaging:

  • Drag'n'Drop installer for macOS

• Removed Components

  • QuEASY
  • PyBALL
  • DB support