Building network automation solutions

TL&DR: we renamed netsim-tools to netlab as the project evolved from a bag of tools into a full-blown intent-based lab-as-code system (how’s that for a Bullshit Bingo winner?).

There is no change to the functionality, user interface (CLI commands), or documentation. Upgrading the existing Python package should install the new one.

Now for more details:

• The bulk of the change was renaming the Python package to networklab¹ and fixing documentation (replacing all netsim-tools references with netlab). We also bumped the version to 1.3 (release notes)
• GitHub repositories have been renamed: ipspace/netsim-tools to ipspace/netlab and ipspace/netsim-examples to ipspace/netlab-examples. GitHub creates automatic redirects – git remotes and forks still work – but it might be a good idea to update your remote repositories with git remote set-url. @Loren: thanks a million for the tip!
• The Python modules have not been renamed
• The readthedocs documentation URL has not changed yet. We might change it sometime in the future.
• netlab-related blog posts were updated to use the new project name and repository URL. The blog post URLs will not change.

What’s the impact:

• If you haven’t used netlab before: none. Follow the updated installation guide.
• A happy user? Remove netsim-tools package with pip3 uninstall netsim-tools and install networklab package with pip3 install networklab (or whatever else you’re doing to manage your Python packages).
• You can also upgrade the netsim-tools package with pip3 install --upgrade netsim-tools. That command will remove the old netsim-tools package, replace it with an empty stub, and install the networklab package (now a dependency of netsim-tools).

Revision History

2022-08-28

Renamed GitHub repositories based on feedback by Loren.

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1. … because someone squatted on netlab package a few days before I planned to make the change. Bummer. ↩︎