Repository structure¶
The Brian source code repository is broken into the following directories:
brian
The main package, documented above, with the following additional directories:
deprecated
- For code that is no longer up to date, but that we keep for backwards compatibility.
experimental
- Package for storing experimental code that can be used but whose syntax and functionality may change.
library
- Modules where specific models are defined (e.g. neuron and synaptic models).
tests
Package for storing tests, composed of:
testcorrectness
- Package for tests of mathematical correctness of algorithms, etc.
testinterface
- Package for tests of individual Brian modules. Module names are the names of the module being tested prepended by ‘test’.
unused
- Old stuff
utils
- Modules that are not Brian-specific, for example circular.py defines circular arrays used for storing spiking events.
dev
The main development folder, for works in progress, debugging stuff, tools, etc. Consists of:
benchmarking
- Code for benchmarking performance against other languages and simulators.
BEPs
- The Brian Enhancement Proposals.
debugging
Dumping ground for files used for debugging a problem.
troubleshooting
- Used for debugging problems from the
brian-support
mailing list.
ideas
- For ideas for new features, incomplete implementations, etc. This is
where new things go before going into the main Brian package or the
experimental
package. logo
- The Brian logo in various sizes.
optimising
- Ideas for making Brian faster.
speedtracking
- A sort of testing framework which tracks, over time, the speed of various Brian features.
tests
- A few scripts to run Brian’s tests.
tools
The main folder for developer tools.
docs
- Scripts for invoking Sphinx and building the documentation. Includes script to automatically generate documentation for examples and tutorials, and to build index entries for these.
newrelease
- Tools for creating a new public release of Brian.
searchreplace
- Some tools for doing global changes to the code (e.g. syntax changes).
dist
- Automatically generated distribution files.
docs
- Automatically generated documentation files in HTML/PDF format.
docs_sphinx
- Sources for Sphinx documentation.
examples
- Examples of Brian’s use. Documentation is automatically generated from all of these examples.
tutorials
- Source files for the tutorials, documentation is automatically generated
from these. Each tutorial has a directory, possibly containing an
introduction.txt
Sphinx source, followed by a series of files in alphabetical order (e.g. 1a, 1b, 1c, etc.). Multi-line strings are treated as Sphinx source code (take a look at a few examples to get the idea).