Release Notes¶
This document presents user-visible changes in each release of SpacePy.
0.5 Series¶
0.5.0 (2024-03-11)¶
This release marks the end of all support for Python 2. SpacePy now requires Python 3.6 or later. Minimum supported versions for other dependencies were also increased; see Dependency requirements for details.
The SpacePy team now delivers binary wheels for all supported Python versions (3.6-3.12) for 64-bit Windows, Linux, and Mac. Most users will not need to build SpacePy; see Installing SpacePy for details.
Due to changes in f2py, SpacePy 0.5.0 will not build on Python 3.12 with numpy 1.26 or later. It will, however, run fine. The SpacePy team provides binary wheels for Mac and Windows. Users who wish to build from source on Python 3.12 should first install numpy (which will likely be built from source):
pip install --no-build-isolation "numpy<1.26"
pip install --no-build-isolation spacepy
Dependency requirements¶
Not all dependencies are required for all functionality; see SpacePy Dependencies for full details, including what functionality is lost if a dependency is not installed.
The setup.py based install process is no longer supported; as such,
pip and setuptools are now required. wheel is required if
building from source. The vast majority of modern Python distributions
already have these requirements.
Installing from pip normally installs all necessary dependencies.
The minimum supported version of all dependencies was updated in SpacePy 0.5.0. Minimum versions are:
CPython 3.6
AstroPy 1.0
CDF 3.5
dateutil 2.1
h5py 2.10
matplotlib 3.1
numpy 1.15.1
scipy 1.0
The only supported compiler is the GNU gfortran compiler, aka “gnu95”. Support for the older g77 compiler, as well as the Portland Group and Intel compilers, has been removed.
New features¶
readJSONheadedASCII and readJSONMetadata
now support reading from gzipped input files; filenames ending with
.gz are assumed to be gzipped.
datamodel now has explicit support for operations using
ISTP-compliant metadata; see dmarray and
SpaceData for details. In particular note the plotting
support with plot.
irbempy now provides an interface to the SHIELDOSE-2 shielding
radiation dose model. This is implemented through the
Shieldose2 class.
simpleSpectrogram() supports treating zeros as
valid data on log plots.
pycdf set_backward() now returns the prior
state of backward compatibility mode.
toCDF() now supports writing backward-compatible CDFs.
ImfInput has been updated with a more flexible
quick-look plot capability. Variable naming has been unified to remove issues
with temperature and density naming.
Bats2d can now calculate parallel and
perpendicular velocities with new calc_uperp
and calc_upar methods.
Bats2d objects and the class that handles quad tree building
(QTree) now accepts a keyword argument to set the size
of each block: blocksize. Default value is 8.
dictree now supports returning the output instead of printing it.
Deprecations and removals¶
Since plot styles are no longer applied on import, importing
spacepy.plot.apionly has no effect and is deprecated.
The new pip-based install method does not support a separate build
step so add_build_to_path is deprecated. Alternatives
include using an editable install or installing
in a custom location using --prefix and manually editing PYTHONPATH.
coordinates no longer warns if a backend (irbem or
SpacePy) is not specified. The default backend is SpacePy, as it has
been since 0.4.0.
In time, the cls argument of
update_items has been removed (deprecated in 0.2.2).
The end-user normally does not call this function.
In bats, removed add_b_magsphere_legacy and
add_b_magsphere_new, which were deprecated in 0.2.0. Use
add_b_magsphere() (which is the same as
add_b_magsphere_new).
Major bugfixes¶
toCDF() handling of time types other than TT2000 has
been fixed.
Other changes¶
IdlFile no longer sorts unstructured data from binary files; see
that documentation for details. Thanks Lutz Rastaetter.
toCDF() now only accepts valid keyword arguments.
Plot styles are not automatically applied on import of plot. Use
plot.style directly to apply the desired style.
Bats2d plot functions will no longer raise an exception when
trying to add a planet/inner boundary patch without an ‘rbody’ attribute
present. Rather, the patch will not be applied to the axes object.
0.4 Series¶
0.4.1 (2022-09-15)¶
This minor release provides no changes in functionality, but fixes installation problems on some systems. There is no need to upgrade from a functioning 0.4.0 (and no harm in doing so).
Other changes¶
Unicode characters were removed from the IRBEM sources, fixing compilation problems for certain user locale settings.
The version of numpy used for building on Apple Silicon Mac was updated.
Documentation on troubleshooting pip problems was improved.
0.4.0 (2022-09-07)¶
This release marks the end of support and/or fixes for bugs that cannot
be reproduced on Python 3. As with the previous release series, SpacePy
0.4.0 can still be built and installed “by hand” on Python 2, but no
Python 2 binaries are provided and this version will not install on Python 2
using pip.
New features¶
The LANLstar module has been rewritten to use numpy to
evaluate the neural networks instead of relying on ffnet. The
temporary removal of support for this module in SpacePy 0.3.0 has therefore
been lifted. The new implementation provides a slight performance increase
with no change in results or accuracy.
VarBundle now supports output to and input from
SpaceData objects as well as
CDF.
Both coordinates backends now provide access to the TEME
coordinate system (as used by the SGP4 orbit propagator).
Deprecations and removals¶
The _nelems method of Var has been removed;
use the public interface nelems(). (Deprecated
in 0.2.2).
irbempy get_sysaxes, sph2car and car2sph
were deprecated in SpacePy 0.2.2 and have been removed. In place
of the latter functions, sph2car() and
car2sph() should be used.
Major bugfixes¶
The installer has been updated to address certain build issues, particularly on Mac. The Mac installation directions have been completely rewritten.
pycdf has been updated for Apple Silicon (ARM/M1);
Python 3.8 is required for this support.
pycdf contains a time conversion workaround for
versions of the NASA CDF library before 3.8.0.1. Non-integral epoch
values close to midnight would erroneously return the following day;
epoch_to_datetime() now returns the
correct value on all CDF library versions.
The IRBEM backend for coordinate transformations has been updated to correct the specification of transformations through the J2000 and TOD systems, including correctly setting the GEI and TOD systems to be equivalent. This may change results by a small amount. The IRBEM update also traps a singularity at the South pole in the conversion to geodetic (GDZ) coordinates.
Dependency requirements¶
LANLstar now uses a numpy-based implementation (based on
contributions from Aaron Hendry) so neither ffnet or networkx are
required to use it. These dependencies were removed in SpacePy 0.3.0, but
were still required for use of LANLstar. Support for LANLstar is
reinstated in SpacePy 0.4.0.
Other changes¶
pycdf no longer warns when defaulting to version 3 CDFs
and TIME_TT2000 time type if not specified; the warning was added in
0.2.2 and the default changed in 0.3.0. Use
set_backward() to create version 2 CDFs and
explicitly specify a time type (e.g. with new())
if TT2000 is not desired.
The IRBEM library bundled with SpacePy has been updated to reflect recent updates and bugfixes, and reflects the upstream repository as of 2022-08-29 (commit dfb9d26).
0.3 Series¶
0.3.0 (2022-04-27)¶
This release continues the phaseout of Python 2
support. No Python 2 binaries are provided, and 0.3.0 will not install
on Python 2 with pip. Installation via setup.py from a source
distribution is still available.
This is the last release with Python 2 bugfix support. SpacePy 0.4.0 will make no attempt to maintain functionality for Python 2 and SpacePy 0.5.0 will not function without Python 3.
Windows binaries are only provided as 64-bit wheels, installable with
pip, for Python 3.6 and later. Windows executable installers and
32-bit binaries are no longer provided.
New features¶
The coordinates module has been overhauled with a new,
Python-based backend. This provides comparable performance to the
existing irbempy backend with higher precision and
reduces the dependence on Fortran. By default, irbemlib will still be
built at installation time. The default backend remains IRBEM; in
0.4.0, this will switch to the new ctrans based
backend. The new igrf module is part of this support
but may be of interest on its own.
In accordance with a change from NASA, pycdf now
assumes strings in CDFs are UTF-8. It will no longer raise errors on
reading non-ASCII data from a CDF. See String handling in
the pycdf documentation for details.
ae9ap9 now supports the new ephem model file format
(>=1.50.001) via parseHeader(). The old file
format is deprecated.
Deprecations and removals¶
HTML documentation is no longer installed with
SpacePy. help() now opens the latest online
documentation. Offline documentation
are available separately (files named like spacepy-x.y.z-doc.zip
and spacepy-x.y.z-doc.pdf) and as part of the source distribution
(spacepy-x.y.z.tar.gz or spacepy-x.y.z.zip). These files can
be downloaded from SpacePy’s releases on GitHub; the source can also
be found on PyPI.
LANLstar requires ffnet, which
does not install properly with current setuptools (version 58). The SpacePy team
is working on replacing this dependency, but in the meantime
LANLstar is unsupported and will require manually installing
ffnet and networkx.
As mentioned above, ae9ap9 support for the old ephem
model file format is deprecated.
Colourmaps have been removed from plot. The same
colourmaps (plasma and viridis) have been available in
matplotlib since at least 1.5. (Deprecated in 0.2.3.)
The old name spectrogram for Spectrogram
has been removed. (Deprecated in 0.2.2.)
The read_ram_dst function has been removed from
ram, as it operates on files that are no longer
written by RAM-SCB. (Deprecated in 0.1.6.)
The fix_format function has been removed from
rim; Iono can now
read these files directly. (Deprecated in 0.2.2.)
The from_dict method of CDF attribute lists
(gAttrList(), zAttrList())
has been removed. Use clone(), which
supports cloning from dictionaries. (Deprecated in 0.1.5.)
The feq function has been removed from toolbox;
use numpy.isclose(). (Deprecated in 0.2.2.)
Quaternion math functions have been removed from
toolbox; they are available in
coordinates. (Deprecated in 0.2.2.)
Dependency requirements¶
Due to the new backend, scipy is now required for
coordinates (even if using the old backend). 0.11
remains the minimum version.
Since LANLstar is not currently supported, ffnet and
networkx are no longer treated as SpacePy dependencies.
Other changes¶
pycdf now defaults to creating version 3 (not
backward-compatible) CDFs if the backward compatible mode is not
explicitly set (set_backward()). It still
issues a warning when creating a CDF if this is not set; this warning
will be removed in 0.4.0. (Warning added in 0.2.2.)
Similarly, pycdf defaults to TIME_TT2000 when creating
a time variable or attribute without specifying a type (EPOCH or
EPOCH16 are used if TT2000 isn’t available). A warning is issued when
doing so; this warning will be removed in 0.4.0. (Warning added in 0.2.2.)
On Windows, pycdf now looks in more locations for the
NASA CDF library. Newer versions of the library by default install to
a different location (Program Files). The DLL is also now placed
in the bin directory instead of lib, so bin is searched
and the value of environment variable CDF_BIN in addition to
lib and CDF_LIB. The net effect should be to increase the
chance of successfully loading the library, with a small chance of
accidentally loading the wrong one.
The default data source for leapsecond files has been reverted from NASA/MODIS to the USNO, as USNO data services are back online. If present, entries in the configuration file will still be used instead of the default.
0.2 Series¶
0.2.3 (2021-10-30)¶
This is the last release of the 0.2 series and the last with full
support for Python 2. Binary installers (including
wheels) for 32-bit Windows will also end
after the 0.2 series, as will Windows installers. The only binaries
for Windows will be 64-bit wheels, installable with pip.
New features¶
pycdf now supports variables with sparse records, including
enabling/disabling sparse records (sparse()) and
setting the pad value (pad()). Thanks Antoine Brunet.
Deprecations and removals¶
The colourmaps provided in the plot module have been
deprecated. The same colourmaps have been available in matplotlib since
at least 1.5, and users who do not directly import the colourmaps should
see no impact.
Major bugfixes¶
The passing of keyword arguments from bootHisto()
to numpy.histogram() and matplotlib.pyplot.bar() has been fixed.
The check for out-of-date leapseconds in time has been
fixed (previously warned even when the file was up to date.)
Fixed installation on new versions of setuptools, which removed
bdist_wininst support (#530).
The handling of library paths on Windows has been updated. This should
fix situations where irbempy would not import on
Windows with Python 3.8 or later. This did not seem to be a problem
with Anaconda, but would sometimes manifest with Python from the app
store or from http://python.org/ (#507)
Other changes¶
Modern leapsecond rules are applied from 1958-1972 rather than
rounding fractional leapseconds. See time for full
discussion of leap seconds and other conversion considerations.
The handling of the .spacepy directory (see SpacePy Configuration)
has been improved. If the SPACEPY environment variable is used,
the directory will be created. The import process also is less fragile
in the case of a partially-created .spacepy directory or an
invalid (e.g. empty) spacepy.rc.
0.2.2 (2020-12-29)¶
The 0.2 series will be the last with full support for Python 2; 0.2.3 will likely be the last release. Binary installers for 32-bit Windows will also end after the 0.2 series.
New features¶
irbempy incorporates upstream IRBEMlib rev620. This
adds IGRF13 coefficients. coordinates and
irbempy now also support using all supported
coordinate systems as inputs to routines; if a routine does not
support an input system, it will be automatically converted.
Ticktock supports conversions to and from
astropy.time.Time.
The following classes, functions, and methods are new:
|
Given an input rotation matrix, return the equivalent quaternion |
|
Given an input quaternion, return the equivalent rotation matrix. |
|
Rebin one axis of input data based on values of another array |
|
Add directional arrows along a plotted line. |
|
Concatenate data from multiple CDFs |
|
Set fill values to NaN |
|
Check for attributes with empty string |
|
Collective handling of ISTP-compliant variable and its dependencies. |
|
Check DELTA variables |
|
Check for attributes with empty string |
Deprecations and removals¶
pycdf now warns if creating a new CDF file without
explicitly setting backward compatible or not backward compatible
(set_backward()). The default is
still to make backward-compatible CDFs, but this will change in
0.3.0. Similarly it now warns if creating a time variable without
specifying a time type; the default is still to use EPOCH or
EPOCH16, but this will change to TIME_TT2000 in 0.3.0.
fix_format() is now deprecated, as
Iono can now read these files directly.
Quaternion math functions have been moved to
coordinates; using the functions in
toolbox is deprecated.
feq() is deprecated; numpy 1.7 added the equivalent
isclose().
The spectrogram class is now capitalized
(Spectrogram); the old, lower-case variant is
kept for compatibility but will be removed.
Dependency requirements¶
Not all dependencies are required for all functionality; see SpacePy Dependencies for full details, including what functionality is lost if a dependency is not installed.
numpy 1.10 is now required. (Many functions erroneously required it from 0.2.1, but this was not adequately documented.)
scipy 0.11 is now the minimum supported version of SciPy. (Again, this was erroneously required in 0.2.0 without appropriate documentation.)
Several dependencies without an established minimum version were tested.
- As of 0.2.2, minimum supported versions of dependencies are:
CPython 2 2.7 or CPython 3 3.2
AstroPy 1.0
CDF 2.7
dateutil 1.4 (earlier may work)
ffnet 0.7 (earlier may work)
h5py 2.6 (earlier may work)
matplotlib 1.5
networkx 1.0 (earlier may work)
numpy 1.10
scipy 0.11
Major bugfixes¶
Time conversions between time systems before 1961 now use the proper number of leapseconds (0).
Many minor bugfixes.
Other changes¶
Data sources for leapsecond files and omni Qin-Denton
files have been updated to provide current sources. If present,
entries in the configuration file will still be
used instead. A (configurable) warning is issued for out-of-date leapsecond
files.
The representation of leap second intervals in time systems which cannot directly represent them has been changed. Formerly times such as 2008-12-31T23:59:60 were represented in e.g. UTC datetime as the the beginning of the next day, e.g. 2009-01-01T00:00:00. They are now represented by the last possible moment of the same day, e.g. 2008-12-31T23:59:59.999999. Fractional leapsecond counts are now rounded to the integer instead of truncated; this rounding is applied to the total TAI - UTC quantity not the individual increments of leap seconds. E.g successive 0.2, 0.2, 0.2 leap seconds will result in 0, 0, and 1 new leap seconds.
Similarly, leap seconds are now included in the fractional day calculation of MJD, so MJD values around a leap second may be different than in previous versions of SpacePy.
Most time systems are now converted to/from TAI rather than using datetime. This may cause small differences with previous versions of SpacePy, on order of a double precision. RDT and JD are particularly affected for dates in the modern era. Time conversions around leapseconds may also be different; in many cases they were undefined in previous versions.
now() and today()
return times in UTC; in previous versions the value returned was local,
but was treated as UTC for all conversions (and thus inaccurate.)
See time for full discussion of leap seconds, time
resolution, and other conversion considerations.
0.2.1 (2019-10-02)¶
New features¶
The following module is new:
Support for ISTP-compliant CDFs |
Deprecations and removals¶
None
Dependency requirements¶
No changes to minimum dependency versions.
- As of 0.2.1, the minimum versions of dependencies are:
CPython 2 2.7 or CPython 3 3.2
CDF 2.7
matplotlib 1.5
numpy 1.4
scipy 0.10
Other dependencies have no established minimum. See SpacePy Dependencies for full details.
Major bugfixes¶
Fixed compliation of irbempy on several systems.
Other changes¶
None of note.
0.2.0 (2019-06-22)¶
New features¶
Deprecations and removals¶
None
Dependency requirements¶
Support for Python 2.6 was removed; 2.7 is the only supported version of Python 2.
- As of 0.2.0, the minimum versions of dependencies are:
CPython 2 2.6 or CPython 3 3.2
CDF 2.7
matplotlib 1.5
numpy 1.4
scipy 0.10
Other dependencies have no established minimum. See SpacePy Dependencies for full details.
Major bugfixes¶
human_sort() was fixed for non-numeric inputs
(the normal case.) This had been broken since 0.1.6.
Many minor bugfixes as well.
Other changes¶
Many updates to improve ease of installation, including Windows binary wheels.
0.1 Series¶
See the CHANGELOG file in the source distribution for changes in the 0.1 release series.