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Contrib drivers

instro-contrib is a separate package containing drivers that have passed code review but were verified on real hardware by the contributor, not by Nominal. They typically come from one of two sources:
  • Community contributions: drivers submitted by users who own the hardware and tested locally.
  • Staff drops: drivers Nominal has written for a device it doesn’t have on hand.
If a driver is in instro-contrib, that means: it type-checks, it has a unit test against a mocked transport, and a Nominal reviewer has read it. It does not mean Nominal has personally run it on the device.

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Install

instro-contrib is not yet published as its own distribution. For now, depend on it via a workspace install or a Git ref to this repo. A published release will arrive alongside instro’s PyPI publication.

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Import path

Contrib drivers live under instro.contrib.<category>.drivers.<driver_module>: 
from instro.contrib.psu.drivers import SomeVendorPSU
from instro.psu import InstroPSU

psu = InstroPSU(
    name="myPSU",
    driver=SomeVendorPSU(visa_resource="USB0::..."),
    num_channels=1,
)
The category-level class (InstroPSU, InstroDMM, etc.) is always imported from core instro. Only the concrete driver lives in instro.contrib.

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Stability expectations

  • API may change between releases. A contrib driver’s constructor or behavior may be revised based on user feedback or graduation. Pin to a specific commit if you need a frozen target.
  • No regression verification by Nominal. A core dependency change (e.g. a VisaDriver refactor) might break a contrib driver between releases. The smoke test catches import-level breaks. Behavioral breaks may not surface until you run it.
  • Bugs are accepted as PRs. If you hit a problem with a contrib driver, the fastest path to a fix is usually contributing one: the original author may not be reachable.

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Available drivers

The list starts empty. Drivers will appear here as they’re contributed. To check what’s currently available, browse packages/instro-contrib/instro/contrib/ in the repo.

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Graduation to core

When Nominal acquires the hardware and can verify the driver directly, it moves into core instro. The import path drops .contrib: 
# Before (contrib)
from instro.contrib.psu.drivers import SomeVendorPSU

# After graduation (core)
from instro.psu.drivers import SomeVendorPSU
Graduations are noted in CHANGELOG.md. The old instro.contrib import path is a hard cutover. There is no compatibility shim.

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Contributing a driver

See the Contrib Package section of CONTRIBUTING.md for the contribution bar and review process.