ZHinst QCoDeS drivers to report LabOne version

[astafan8]

In our group we have a large fleet of MFLIs/UHFLIs and other ZI isntruments, and we use information provided by the .IDN() parameter (qcodes drivers for all the instruments implement it in some way) to track which instruments are used, what FW versions are, and so on.

We found ourselves missing information on the version of LabOne that's used. So generally the question of this issue is: could you add this to the implementation of the .IDN() parameter?

Going into more details, my colleague @jakuesel found the following way of retrieving the full version of LabOne, note that we need to do extra work in order to retreive the patch version:

import zhinst.core

def get_labone_version():
      # Connect to the Data Server
      daq = zhinst.core.ziDAQServer('localhost', 8004, 6)

      # Get the LabOne version
      version = daq.getString('/zi/about/version')
      revision_dict = daq.get('/zi/about/revision')
      revision_value = revision_dict['zi']['about']['revision']['value'][0]

      # the revision is the full version as an integer where as the version is just the major and minor
      # using both to determine the full version.
      revision_str = str(revision_value)

      major, minor = version.split(".")
      patch_start = len(major) + len(minor)
      patch_str = revision_str[patch_start:]

      version_full = version + "." + patch_str

      return version_full

version = get_labone_version()
print(f"LabOne Version: {version}")

Is this the correct approach? Or is there perhaps an API entry that we missed? In general, it'd be great to have a dedicated API to get the full version of LabOne.

We are happy to contribute this as a pull-request, after receiving the guidance from you on what the best way to implement this is.

Thank you in advance!

[tobiasah]

Interesting topic.

Generally speaking there are three relevant versions

1. Firmware
2. LabOne DataServer
3. LabOne Client

Ideally all of them are always upgraded together, which would make only one version relevant for you. (For the client and data server this is enforced with the latest labone release (see https://docs.zhinst.com/labone_api_user_manual/description_and_guidelines/api_data_server_version.html).

The easiest to retrieve is the client version:

from zhinst.core import __version__ as zhinst_version_str

For the data server version (which must match the client version) I am not aware of a more straightforward approach than you already came up with. (With the latest LabOne version, the revision is not really relevant anymore, and every public release already has a unique version string.)

Does this answer the question?

[tobiasah]

Edit: Since 25.01 there is a new node called /zi/about/fullversion (https://gitlab.zhinst.com/labone/labone/-/merge_requests/8629/diffs#ca836156d450ef4fee497a84b677f58c36406c98_0_33), a combined version which would simplify your code example a bit