CHANGELOG.rst

Plasmapy v0.6.0 (2021-03-14)

Backwards Incompatible Changes

• The State namedtuple was changed to the ~plasmapy.particles.IonicFraction class. (Note: #1046 subsequently changed that to ~plasmapy.particles.IonicLevel). (#796)
• Now, when the ~plasmapy.particles.IonizationState class is provided with an ion, the ionic fraction for that ion is set to 100% for the corresponding element or isotope. (#796)
• AtomicError was renamed to ~plasmapy.particles.exceptions.ParticleError and MissingAtomicDataError was renamed to ~plasmapy.particles.exceptions.MissingParticleDataError. (#796)
• In plasmapy.particles, the IonizationStates class was renamed to ~plasmapy.particles.IonizationStateCollection. Argument n of IonizationStates was changed to n0 in ~plasmapy.particles.IonizationStateCollection. (#796)
• Moved and refactored error message formatting functionality from plasmapy.utils.error_messages to plasmapy.utils.code_repr. (#920)
• Renamed the available "methods" for computing the Coulomb logarithm in an attempt to make the names more explicit. This is implemented using the method keyword for functions ~plasmapy.formulary.collisions.Coulomb_logarithm and ~plasmapy.formulary.collisions.impact_parameter, and then propogated throughout the functionality in plasmapy.formulary.collisions. (#962)
• Add dependency pandas >= 1.0.0. Modify xarray dependency to be xarray >= 0.14.0. (#963)
• The ~plasmapy.plasma.grids.AbstractGrid property ~plasmapy.plasma.grids.AbstractGrid.grid is now dimensioned (has units) and cannot be accessed if all dimensions do not share the same units. (#981)
• Renamed attribute is_uniform_grid on ~plasmapy.plasma.grids.AbstractGrid to is_uniform. (#981)
• Drop Python 3.6 support. (#987)
• The __getitem__ method of ~plasmapy.plasma.grids.AbstractGrid now returns a ~astropy.units.Quantity array instead of a reference to a xarray.DataArray. (#1027)
• Renamed IonicFraction to ~plasmapy.particles.ionization_state.IonicLevel. This lays groundwork for future changes, where that class is going to become more than a fraction. (#1046)

Deprecations and Removals

• The particle attribute of ~plasmapy.particles.particle_class.Particle has been deprecated in favor of the new symbol attribute. The particle attribute now issues a FutureWarning to indicate that it will be removed in a future release. (#984)

Features

• Created the ~plasmapy.simulation.abstractions.AbstractNormalizations class to serve as an abstract interface for future classes that represent normalizations. (#859)
• Create the analysis sub-package plasmapy.analysis.swept_langmuir for analysis code related to analyzing swept Langmuir traces. Sub-package is initiated with functionality for calculating the floating potential, ~plasmapy.analysis.swept_langmuir.floating_potential.find_floating_potential. (#889)
• Added a proton radiography diagnostic module containing a tool for generating synthetic proton radiographs from simulated or calculated fields using a particle tracking algorithm. (#895)
• Created new grid objects for representing plasma quantities as functions of space. (#909)
• Added functions in plasmapy.utils.code_repr to reproduce strings that represent a call to a method or attribute of an object. These functions are used, for example, in error messages. (#920)
• Add the function ~plasmapy.dispersion.two_fluid_dispersion.two_fluid_dispersion_solution to plasmapy.dispersion, which gives an analytical solution to the dispersion relation as derived by P. M. Bellan 2012 (DOI: 10.1029/2012JA017856). (#932)
• Refactor out the ~plasmapy.simulation.particle_integrators.boris_push tracking integrator algorithm from ~plasmapy.simulation.particletracker.ParticleTracker. (#953)
• For plasmapy.plasma.grids functionality, add better support for recognizing and handling physical quantities (e.g. spatial position, magnetic field, etc.) added to a grid object. (#963)
• For plasmapy.plasma.grids functionality, improve interpolation performance on non-uniform grids. (#963)
• Added the ~plasmapy.formulary.drifts.diamagnetic_drift function to ~plasmapy.formulary.drifts. (#966)
• Add properties ~plasmapy.plasma.grids.AbstractGrid.grid_resolution and ~plasmapy.plasma.grids.AbstractGrid.quantities to ~plasmapy.plasma.grids.AbstractGrid. (#981)
• Make several speed improvements to the functionality in ~plasmapy.plasma.grids, including the addition of keyword persistent to ~plasmapy.plasma.grids.AbstractGrid (and child class) methods ~plasmapy.plasma.grids.AbstractGrid.nearest_neighbor_interpolator and ~plasmapy.plasma.grids.AbstractGrid.volume_averaged_interpolator. This keyword allows the interpolators to assume the last grid setup and contents if input arguments have not changed. (#981)
• Add methods ~plasmapy.plasma.grids.AbstractGrid.on_grid and ~plasmapy.plasma.grids.AbstractGrid.vector_intersects to ~plasmapy.plasma.grids.AbstractGrid. (#981)
• The ~plasmapy.particles.particle_class.Particle class now contains an attribute named symbol that is intended to replace particle. The symbol attribute has been added as a property to ~plasmapy.particles.particle_class.AbstractParticle, ~plasmapy.particles.particle_class.CustomParticle, and ~plasmapy.particles.particle_class.DimensionlessParticle. (#984)
• Added new can_be_zero check parameter to ~plasmapy.utils.decorators.checks.CheckValues and its dependents ( ~plasmapy.utils.decorators.checks.check_values, ~plasmapy.utils.decorators.validators.ValidateQuantities, ~plasmapy.utils.decorators.validators.validate_quantities). (#999)
• Both plasmapy.particles.CustomParticle and plasmapy.particles.DimensionlessParticle now allow users to define a custom symbol via the symbol keyword argument, which can then be accessed by the symbol attribute in each of these classes. (#1015)
• The greater than (>) operator can now be used between ~plasmapy.particles.Particle and/or ~plasmapy.particles.ParticleList instances to get the nuclear reaction energy. (#1017)
• Create plasmapy.particles.ParticleList as a list-like collection for instances of plasmapy.particles.Particle and plasmapy.particles.CustomParticle. Adding ~plasmapy.particles.Particle and/or ~plasmapy.particles.CustomParticle instances will now create a ~plasmapy.particles.ParticleList. (#1017)
• Added method ~plasmapy.plasma.grids.AbstractGrid.require_quantities to ~plasmapy.plasma.grids.AbstractGrid that verifies a list of quantities is present on the grid. Method is also incorported into ~plasmapy.diagnostics.proton_radiography.SyntheticProtonRadiograph. (#1027)
• Added the ~plasmapy.diagnostics.proton_radiography.SyntheticProtonRadiograph.add_wire_mesh() method to ~plasmapy.diagnostics.proton_radiography.SyntheticProtonRadiograph to allow the creation of synthetic proton radiographs that include a wire mesh reference grid. (#1049)
• Created a function, ~plasmapy.formulary.mathematics.rot_a_to_b, that calculates the rotation matrix that will rotate one 3D vector onto another. (#1054)
• Made ~plasmapy.plasma.grids.AbstractGrid.is_uniform a properly-documented public attribute of ~plasmapy.plasma.grids.AbstractGrid. (#1072)

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a minus sign bug in the Particle Tracker simulation that caused the E×B drift to go in the incorrect direction. (#953)
• Bugfix plasmapy.analysis.fit_functions.Linear.root_solve to handle the case where the slope is zero and no finite roots exist. (#959)
• Fixed a bug that prevented nested iterations of a single ~plasmapy.particles.IonizationState or ~plasmapy.particles.IonizationStateCollection instance. (#1025)
• Fixed a bug in grids.py for non-uniform grids that arose when xarray upgraded to v0.17.0 (#1027)
• In ~plasmapy.diagnostics.proton_radiography.SyntheticProtonRadiograph, adaptive dt now calculates the cyclotron period using the provided particle charge and mass (previously assumed protons). (#1035)
• In ~plasmapy.diagnostics.proton_radiography.SyntheticProtonRadiograph, the adaptive timestep algorithm now works when particles are provided using ~plasmapy.diagnostics.proton_radiography.SyntheticProtonRadiograph.load_particles. (#1035)
• In ~plasmapy.diagnostics.proton_radiography.SyntheticProtonRadiograph, removed highly deflected particles so the call of ~plasmapy.diagnostics.proton_radiography.SyntheticProtonRadiograph.max_deflection does not raise an exception. (#1035)

Improved Documentation

• Add narrative documentation on ionization state functionality. (#796)
• Added description to ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.Hall_parameter signature and equation in docstrings. (#934)
• Updated documentation for the plasmapy.particles and plasmapy.utils subpackages. (#942)
• Improves documentation of plasmapy/formulary/quantum.py by cleaning up docstrings of contained functionality. (#951)
• Update all docstrings associated with computing the Coulomb logarithm and the possible methods of calculation. (#962)
• Add two Jupyter notebooks for functionality contained in `plasmapy.plasma.grids`: grids_cartesian.ipynb and grids_nonuniform.ipynb. (#963)
• Added the ExB drift notebook, which demonstrates the analytical solution for the drift and the implementation of the corresponding formulary drift functions, ~plasmapy.formulary.drifts.force_drift and ~plasmapy.formulary.drifts.ExB_drift. (#971)
• Describe what constitutes a valid representation of a particle in the docstring for the plasmapy.particles.particle_class.ParticleLike typing construct. (#985)
• Put the docstring for plasmapy.particles.Particle.is_category into numpydoc format. (#1039)
• Adds formulas (which were missing) to the docstrings of ~plasmapy.formulary.dimensionless.quantum_theta and ~plasmapy.formulary.dimensionless.beta. (#1041)
• Add live rendering of changelog entries on documentation builds, based on sphinx-changelog. (#1052)
• Created an example notebook demonstrating how the ~plasmapy.diagnostics.proton_radiography.SyntheticProtonRadiograph class can be used to generate synthetic proton radiographs with arbitrary source profiles. Add code documentation links to all proton radiograph notebooks. (#1054)
• Update formatting and broken sphinx.ext.intersphinx links in plasmapy.formulary docstrings. (#1058)
• Make minor fixes in plasmapy.particles docstrings. (#1064)
• Organize the layout of the example Jupyter notebooks on the Read the Docs example page. (#1066)
• Fix formatting and broken sphinx.ext.intersphinx links in docstrings in various places in the code base. Improve installation instructions in the docs; the subpackage stability matrix, and funding acknowledgments. (#1076)

Trivial/Internal Changes

• Removed colorama as a dependency. (#920)
• Moved remaining CI from CircleCI to GitHub Actions. (#996)
• Add notebook CI through nbqa. (#997)
• Remove lambda expressions from plasmapy.particles and plasmapy.utils. (#1013)
• Add unicode particle aliases for electrons ("β-", "β⁻"), muons ("μ-", "μ⁻"), anti-muons ("μ+", "μ⁺"), tau particles ("τ", "τ-", "τ⁻"), anti-tau particles ("τ+", "τ⁺") electron neutrinos ("ν_e"), muon neutrinos ("ν_μ"), tau neutrinos ("ν_τ"), and alpha particles ("α"). (#1036)
• A set containing all valid particle categories may now be accessed via plasmapy.particles.Particle.is_category.valid_categories. (#1039)
• Properly handled warnings in test_proton_radiography.py (#1050)

Plasmapy v0.5.0 (2020-12-09)

Backwards Incompatible Changes

• Created plasmapy.dispersion in accordance with PlasmaPy Enhancement Proposal 7 (PLEP 7) and migrated the dispersion functionality (dispersionfunction.py) from plasmapy.formulary to plasmapy.dispersion. (#910)
• Removed default values for the ion and particle arguments of functions contained in plasmapy.formulary.parameters, in accordance with issue [#453](#453), and updated all relevant calls to modified functionality. (#911)
• Moved test helper exceptions from plasmapy.utils.pytest_helpers to plasmapy.tests.helpers. (#919)
• Update plasmapy.formulary.parameters.mass_density so it calculates the mass density for a specific particle from a given number density. Original function calculated the total mass density (ion + electron). (#957)

Features

• Added a function to calculate the power spectrum of thermal bremsstrahlung emitted by a Maxwellian plasma. (#892)
• Added support for multiple electron components to diagnostics.thomson.spectral_density. Also fixed a bug for multiple ion populations. (#893)
• Add dependency pygments >= 2.4.1. (#898)
• Create the plasmapy.analysis package as per PLEP-7 and initialize the package with the ~plasmapy.analysis.fit_functions module. Fit functions are designed to wrap together an analytical function, a curve fitter, uncertainty propagation, and a root solver to make curve fitting a little less painful. (#908)
• Created a new subpackage, plasmapy.tests.helpers, to contain test helper functionality. (#919)
• Create decorator ~plasmapy.utils.decorators.helpers.modify_docstring, which allows for programmatically prepending and/or appending a docstring. (#943)

Bug Fixes

• Allowed implicit conversions of AstroPy units in inputs and outputs of validated functions to happen without warnings. Most notably, this removes warnings on eV inputs to temperature fields. (#886)
• Update plasmapy.formulary.parameters.Alfven_speed to properly use the updated ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.mass_density and maintain the same behavior. Also add handling of the ion input keyword, so ~plasmapy.particles.Particle and the ~plasmapy.particles.Particle convertible representations can be used as inputs. (#957)

Improved Documentation

• Improved the release guide after the release of 0.4.0. (#872)

• Add various improvements to the documentation.

  • Replace home link with the plasmapy logo.
  • Add module and index navigation links to sidebar header.
  • Replace raw html on the main page that simulates a nbgallery with a real nbgallery directive.
  • Move link to view page source code from the header to footer.
  • Add link to footer the jumps the user back to the top of the page.
  • Create and add custom CSS stylesheet.
  • Create _templates directory and templates to customize page elements. (#875)

• Add static stub files to docs/api_static so all modules of plasmapy are indexed. This is necessary to expose all of plasmapy since not all modules are indexed in the narrative documentation. (#878)
• Decompose sub-package plasmapy/utils/roman/ into the plasmapy/utils/roman.py file. Move definition of roman specific Exceptions into plasmapy.utils.exceptions. (#883)
• Replaced references to Riot.im with references to Element.io or Matrix, as appropriate, following their recent rebranding. (#891)
• Update the information on how to cite PlasmaPy, including in the release guide. (#900)

Trivial/Internal Changes

• Apply isort to entire codebase, bringing it back to the pre-commit hook suite. (#857)
• Expand package metadata contained in codemeta.json, following the CodeMeta standard. (#902)
• Changed remaining instances of @u.quantity_input to @validate_quantities in response to issue #880. (#905)
• Switched from Azure Pipelines to GitHub Actions for PR tests to make things easier for contributors. Moved away from Travis CI for test cron jobs. (#952)

Plasmapy v0.4.0 (2020-07-20)

Backwards Incompatible Changes

• Rename plasmapy.atomic to ~plasmapy.particles. In ~plasmapy.formulary.collisions and ~plasmapy.formulary.braginskii, change arguments named particles to species and arguments named ion_particle to ion for multiple functions. (#742)
• Officially delete plasmapy.examples. (#822)
• Move plasmapy.data to plasmapy.particle.data. (#823)
• Renamed the plasmapy.classes subpackage to plasmapy.plasma. (#842)

Features

• Added units to reprs of .formulary.magnetostatics classes. (#743)
• Create prototype abstract interfaces for plasma simulations (#753)
• Created classes to represent custom and dimensionless particles in plasmapy.particles. (#755)
• Create ~plasmapy.formulary.relativity.relativistic_energy function, which uses the established ~plamsapy.formulary.relativity.Lorentz_factor function to aid in the calculation of the relativistic energy of an object. (#805)
• Create ~plasmapy.formulary.dimensionless.Reynolds_number function. (#815)
• Create ~plasmapy.formulary.dimensionless.Mag_Reynolds function. (#820)
• Create ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.Bohm_diffusion function. (#830)
• Added a new diagnostics module thomson containing a function spectral_density that calculates Thomson scattering spectra for Maxwellian plasmas in both the collective and non-collective regimes. As a followup to PR #835, set the minimal required Numpy version to 1.18.1 to finally fix unit dropping bugs. (#831)
• Revised parameters.thermal_speed to support 1D and 2D distributions as well as 3D, and added an example notebook for this function. (#850)
• Create plasmapy/formulary/ionization.py Create ~plasmapy.formulary.ionization.Z_bal function. (#851)
• Create ~plasmapy.formulary.ionization.Saha function. (#860)

• Added aliases (with trailing underscores) for parameters in the formulary:

  • plasmapy.formulary.dimensionless.Reynolds_number -> ~plasmapy.formulary.dimensionless.Re_
  • plasmapy.formulary.dimensionless.Mag_Reynolds -> ~plasmapy.formulary.dimensionless.Rm_
  • plasmapy.formulary.drifts.ExB_drift -> ~plasmapy.formulary.drifts.veb_
  • plasmapy.formulary.drifts.force_drift -> ~plasmapy.formulary.drifts.vfd_
  • plasmapy.formulary.parameters.mass_density -> ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.rho_
  • plasmapy.formulary.parameters.Afven_speed -> ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.va_
  • plasmapy.formulary.parameters.ion_sound_speed -> ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.cs_
  • plasmapy.formulary.parameters.thermal_speed -> ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.vth_
  • plasmapy.formulary.parameters.thermal_pressure -> ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.pth_
  • plasmapy.formulary.parameters.kappa_thermal_speed -> ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.vth_kappa_
  • plasmapy.formulary.parameters.inertial_length -> ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.cwp_
  • plasmapy.formulary.parameters.Hall_parameter -> ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.betaH_
  • plasmapy.formulary.parameters.gyrofrequency -> ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.oc_, ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.wc_
  • plasmapy.formulary.parameters.gyroradius -> ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.rc_, ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.rhoc_
  • plasmapy.formulary.parameters.plasma_frequency -> ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.wp_
  • plasmapy.formulary.parameters.Debye_length -> ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.lambdaD_
  • plasmapy.formulary.parameters.Debye_number -> ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.nD_
  • plasmapy.formulary.parameters.magnetic_pressure -> ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.pmag_
  • plasmapy.formulary.parameters.magnetic_energy_density -> ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.ub_
  • plasmapy.formulary.parameters.upper_hybrid_frequency -> ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.wuh_
  • plasmapy.formulary.parameters.lower_hybrid_frequency -> ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.wlh_
  • plasmapy.formulary.parameters.Bohm_diffusion -> ~plasmapy.formulary.parameters.DB_
  • plasmapy.formulary.quantum.deBroglie_wavelength -> ~plasmapy.formulary.quantum.lambdaDB_
  • plasmapy.formulary.quantum.thermal_deBroglie_wavelength -> ~plasmapy.formulary.quantum.lambdaDB_th_
  • plasmapy.formulary.quantum.Fermi_energy -> ~plasmapy.formulary.quantum.Ef_ (#865)

• Add json_dumps method to ~plasmapy.particles.particle_class.AbstractParticle to convert a particle object into a JSON string. Add json_dump method to ~plasmapy.particles.particle_class.AbstractParticle to serialize a particle object and writes it to a file. Add JSON decoder ~plasmapy.particles.serialization.ParticleJSONDecoder to deserialize JSON objects into particle objects. Add plasmapy.particles.serialization.json_loads_particle function to convert JSON strings to particle objects (using ~plasmapy.particles.serialization.ParticleJSONDecoder). Add plasmapy.particles.json_load_particle function to deserialize a JSON file into a particle object (using ~plasmapy.particles.serialization.ParticleJSONDecoder). (#836)

Bug Fixes

• Fix incorrect use of pkg.resources when defining plasmapy.__version__. Add setuptools to package dependencies. Add a definition of __version__ for developers using source files. (#774)
• Repair notebook links that are defined in the nbsphinx_prolog sphinx configuration variable. (#828)
• Increase the required Astropy version from 3.1 to 4.0, Numpy from 1.14 to 1.16.6, Scipy from 0.19 to 1.2 and lmfit from 0.9.7 to 1.0.1. This fixes long-standing issues with Numpy operations dropping units from AstroPy quantities. (#835)

Improved Documentation

• • Added documentation to file test_converters (#756)
• • Updated installation instructions. (#772)
• Reorder documentation page (#777)
• Fix failing documentation build due to duplicate docstrings for ParticleTracker.kinetic_energy_history and incompatibility of sphinx-automodapi with sphinx v3.0.0. (#780)
• Automate definition of documentation release and version in docs/conf.py with plasmapy.__version__. (#781)
• Add a docstring to __init__.py in plasmapy.formulary. (#788)
• Replaced sphinx-gallery with nbsphinx, turning .py example files into .ipynb files and allowing for easier example submission. (#792)
• Linked various instances of classes and functions in the .ipynb examples in docs/notebooks/ to the respective API docs. (#825)
• Fixed a few documentation formatting errors. (#827)
• Add notes on the PlasmaPy benchmarks repository to documentation. (#841)
• Improve readability of the plasmapy.formulary page by replacing the toctree list with a cleaner reST table. (#867)

Trivial/Internal Changes

• Remove mutable arguments from Particle.is_category method. (#751)
• Remove all occurrences of default mutable arguments (#754)
• Handle ModuleNotFoundError when trying to import __version__ but setuptools_scm has not generated the version.py file. This commonly happens during development when plasmapy is not installed in the python environment. (#763)
• Updated pep8speaks/flake8 configuration and added .pre-commit-config.yaml to simplify automated style checks during development. (#770)
• Removes some lint from setup.py and setup.cfg. Use pkg_resources for version checking in code. Remove version.py file in favor of pkg_resources. (#771)
• Default settings for isort were set to be consistent with default settings for black. (#773)
• Update community meeting and funding information in docs. (#784)
• Improved pull request template to include more information about changelog entries. (#843)
• Added GitHub actions that apply pre-commit and flake8 (separately) to incoming pull requests. (#845)
• Apply pre-commit hooks to entire repository, so that GitHub actions do not shout at contributors needlessly. (#846)
• Update ~plasmapy.particles.particle_class.CustomParticle so input parameters mass and charge can accept string representations of astropy Quantities. (#862)

Plasmapy v0.3.0 (2020-01-25)

Backwards Incompatible Changes

• Create simulation subpackage; move Species particle tracker there; rename to particletracker (#665)
• Changed plasmapy.classes.Species to plasmapy.simulation.ParticleTracker (#668)
• Move pytest helper functionality from plasmapy.utils to ~plasmapy.utils.pytest_helpers (#674)
• Move plasmapy.physics, plasmapy.mathematics and plasmapy.transport into the common plasmapy.formulary subpackage (#692)
• Change ClassicalTransport methods into attributes (#705)

Deprecations and Removals

• Remove parameters_cython.pyx, switching to Numba for the future of computationally intensive code in PlasmaPy (#650)
• Remove plasmapy.constants, which was a thin wrapper around astropy.constants with no added value (#651)

Features

• Generalize ion_sound_speed function to work for all values of k²λ_D² (i.e. not just in the non-dispersive limit). (#700)
• Optimize add__magnetostatics for a 16x speedup in tests! (#703)

Bug Fixes

• Define preserve_signature decorator to help IDEs parse signatures of decorated functions. (#640)
• Fix Pytest deprecations of message argument to raise and warn functions. (#666)
• Fix h5py warning in OpenPMD module, opening files in read mode by default (#717)

Improved Documentation

• Added real-world examples to examples/plot_physics.py and adjusted the plots to be more human-friendly. (#448)
• Add examples images to the top of the main doc page in docsindex.rst (#655)

• Added exampes to the documentation to mass_density

  and Hall_parameter functions (#709)

• Add docstrings to decorator plasmapy.utils.decorators.converter.angular_freq_to_hz. (#729)

Trivial/Internal Changes

• Replace decorator plasmapy.utils.decorators.checks.check_quantity with decorator plasmapy.utils.decorators.validators.validate_quantities. Permanently delete decorator ~plasmapy.utils.decorators.checks.check_quantity and its supporting code. For functions plasmapy.formulary.quantum.chemical_potential and plasmapy.formulary.quantum._chemical_potential_interp, add a RaiseNotImplementedError due to bug outlined in issue #726. Associated pytests are marked with pytest.mark.xfails and doctests are marked with doctests: +SKIP. (#722)
• Add Towncrier automated changelog creation support (#643)
• Move existing "check" decorators to new plasmapy.utils.decorators module (#647)
• Allow running our sphinx-gallery examples as Jupyter notebooks via Binder (#656)
• Overhaul CI setup, following the example of SunPy (#657)
• Patch sphinx_gallery.binder to output custom links to Binder instance (#658)
• Remove the now unnecessary astropy_helpers submodule (#663)
• Followup PR to CI overhaul (#664)
• Add a Codemeta file (codemeta.json) (#676)
• Overhaul and simplify CI, add Python 3.8 to tests, bump minimal required package versions, fix docs. (#712)
• Update communication channels in docs (#715)
• Code style fixes to the atomic subpackage (#716)
• Clean up main package namespace, removing plasmapy.test (#718)
• Reduce precision of tests and doctests to allow for refinements of fundamental constants. (#731)
• Create decorators for checking/validating values and units of function/method input and return arguments. Defined decorators include ~plasmapy.utils.decorators.checks.check_values, ~plasmapy.utils.decorators.checks.check_units, and ~plasmapy.utils.decorators.validators.validate_quantities. These decorators are fully defined by "decorator classes" ~plasmapy.utils.decorators.checks.CheckBase, ~plasmapy.utils.decorators.checks.CheckValues, ~plasmapy.utils.decorators.checks.CheckUnits, and ~plasmapy.utils.decorators.validators.ValidateQuantities. (#648)
• Create a decorator to change output of physics functions from "radians/s" to "hz" (#667)
• Added pytest.mark.slow to pytest markers. Updated documentation to notify developers of functionality. (#677)