Whadup whadup whadup!

Worked really hard this passed two weeks to get pyRevit v4.5-beta ready for y’all. I’m only posting about it here though since this is a beta version and not everyone should install this since it’s a developer test release.

Watch this video here. I’ll take you through this long article in the video to make it simpler:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szci9_WxDaU

(Why) Do I need to install this?

The purpose of this release is to allow (you) developers to test the new pyRevit core (watch this). There are some changes that might affect your scripts if you have used any of the revitutils or scriptutils modules from pyRevit.

IF you have developed your own python scripts that run under pyRevit, you need to install this beta version and start modifying and adjusting your scripts.

ELSE IF you want to deploy pyRevit in your company DO NOT USE this version since it’s just a beta release. I’ll let you know when v4.5 final release is here.

ELSE you don’t develop scripts and want to use the pyRevit standard tools, I’d suggest waiting for the v4.5 final release, although you can install this and test it out. Just don’t get mad if something breaks.

What has changed?

Okay here is a quick list of the major changes. I’ll explain each one in detail:

• pyRevit has a new Rocket mode. In this mode, pyRevit runs all the tools in an extension, using a single IronPython engine to increase performance. Currently this feature is experimental but will be the default pyRevit setting for version 4.6. You’ll have the rest of 2017 to revise and adjust your scripts (not many changes)
• revitutils and scriptutils have been removed (Read this). There is a single module for pyRevit now and it’s pyrevit. The functionality of revitutils and scriptutils modules have been moved inside the main pyrevit module. This is related to the changes required to make the Rocket mode work correctly.
• pyRevit has a new Dynamo compatibility mode. It runs everything under IronPython 2.3.0 which matches the Dynamo IronPython version. You need to test your tools under this mode as well if you want to use it. Everything should be fine but just in case. Watch for unicode changes specifically if you deal with unicode characters.
• pyRevit does not run IronPython in FullFrame mode anymore. You need to set __fullframeengine__ = True in your script to request a FullFrame engine for your script. This is usually completely unnecessary unless you’re using complex modules like requests that require a FullFrame engine
• requests is shipped with pyRevit now.
• You can Win+Shift click on pyRevit tools now and it’ll display a context menu with some options. It’ll show useful information about the script and will let you open the help link for the tool (e.g. youtube videos) or copy information about the script to the clipboard.
• This doesn’t affect you but it’s good to know: pyRevit used to include all the python standard library in its folder structure under pylib. Starting with version 4.5 they’ve been moved to a zip file that is attached to the executing IronPython engine and pylib doesn’t exist anymore. This has two benefits:
  • One is that it allows pyRevit to switch its IronPython engine easily (e.g. use 2.7.7 or 2.3.0 and include the correct standard library for each engine)
  • Removing all those files from the installation saves space.
• This also doesn’t affect you but it’s good to know: lib folder inside pyRevit that include third-party modules that I ship with pyRevit, is now renamed to site_packages to match the standard python folder for third-party packages.

What’s Rocket mode?