What’s new in Kwant 1.2

This article explains the user-visible changes in Kwant 1.2.2, released on 9 December 2015. See also the full list of changes up to the most recent bugfix release of the 1.2 series.

Kwant 1.2 is identical to Kwant 1.1 except that it has been updated to run on Python 3.4 and above. Bugfix releases for the 1.1 and 1.2 series will mirror each other, i.e. 1.1.3 and 1.2.3 will fix the same bugs.

Starting with Kwant 1.2, all Kwant development will target Python 3. We plan, however, to maintain Python 2 support with the 1.1 series for several years.

How to upgrade Kwant scripts to Python 3

Even though the interface and functionality of Kwant remain unchanged between versions 1.1 and 1.2, scripts using Kwant need to be updated to Python 3. This can be done by running the automatic conversion tool on the command line:

2to3 -w example.py

(The above command will rename the original file to example.py.bak.) The necessary changes are typically only superficial, as described in What’s New In Python 3.0.