Extend "Instrument" Property of LoadMask to Accept Filenames

[Peter Parker]

There is a problem with the current state of LoadMask/SaveMask, whereby date information corresponding to the run being masked does not survive the "roundtrip" of being written out and then read back in. This is problematic for runs which use an older version of an instrument's IDF.

Try the following:

• Load EMU00018846 from the archive. (Runs 18846 and earlier for Emu all use an outdated IDF with 32 detectors.)

• Open up the Instrument View, mask some detectors, then do "Apply and Save".

• Use LoadMask to read the mask file back in to Mantid.

• The loading process uses the latest version of the IDF (with 96 detectors), and so you will find that viewing the mask in the Instrument View will show a change in the instrument layout.

Hopefully this hole will be addressed as part of the masking redesign (see #8914), but in the meantime Martyn proposed that we simply allow the Instrument property of LoadMask to accept file paths as well as Instrument names. I.e., if a file path is given that points to an existing IDF then we will use that when loading the mask, else we will treat the property as an instrument name and simply use the old behaviour.

[Peter Parker]

Refs #9205 - While we're revisiting the property, add a validator.

(This change is a safe one to make as the property was essentially mandatory anyway -- previously we were just checking in the exec portion of the alg rather than in init.)

Changeset: 314338295d26304e0686f5ff25cc322dd15a3c7a

[Peter Parker]

Refs #9205 - Change existing unit tests to use ScopedFiles.

Changeset: 7c55d111bac5de399143b00acf46bd2766f5adb3

[Peter Parker]

Refs #9205 - Allow loading of masks by IDF as well as by name.

Changeset: de48fa3b0136371681dd30cd729fb1ab4f7d1197

[Peter Parker]

Refs #9205 - Remove commented-out line.

Changeset: eb086efe437f30c36e2662fd4350fd83336778f8

[Peter Parker]

Tester:

• Make sure that the unit test covers the new functionality of "load by IDF".

• Try it for yourself. Follow the steps listed in the ticket description, but when running LoadMask specify the old version of the IDF. Doing this with Emu data is not mandatory -- any instrument with multiple IDFs over its history will do.

[Jay Rainey]

Changes made address the issue, and improvements to unit test are good. Code is clean, and build servers are green. Closing.

[Jay Rainey]

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/feature/9205_extend_instrument_prop_of_loadmask_to_accept_idfs'

Full changeset: ​c419ca4fa20dee69c0fc4f36b90ec9ab62457c51

[Stuart Campbell]

This ticket has been transferred to github issue ​10048