What do you get when you write code next to a Christmas tree? You can expect to get tons of eye candy, and that’s what netlab release 1.7.1 is all about.

It all started with a cleanup idea: I could replace the internal ASCII table-drawing code with the prettytable library. Stefan was quick to point out that I should be looking at the rich library, and the rest is history:

• netlab up/down/test commands got nicer section headers and color-coded status messages.
• All error messages are now color-coded.
• Tables use Unicode characters that result in perfectly-looking tables.
• YAML and JSON printouts go through the rich library that prettifies them.

We also fixed way too many bugs and added a few things you might find helpful (as opposed to great-looking):

• You can automatically create nodes from group members, so you don’t have to specify the same node twice.
• In validation tests, you can use the ‘wait’ parameter to wait for the control-plane protocols to start.
• VXLAN module can use any loopback interface (not just the Loopback0) for the VTEP IP address
• You can run (properly packaged) Juniper vPTX can run as a container

Upgrading or Starting from Scratch

• For more details, read the release notes.
• To upgrade, execute pip3 install --upgrade networklab.
• New to netlab? Start with the Getting Started document and the installation guide.
• Need help? Open a discussion or an issue in netlab GitHub repository.