Python Polars 0.16.10

🏆 Highlights

• Excel export support via new write_excel IO method (#7251)
• out of core sort on multiple columns (#7244)

🚀 Performance improvements

• improve batched csv readers perf and memory perf (#7329)
• use inlined strings for field and schema (#7272)
• reuse groups in binary expressions (#7202)

✨ Enhancements

• support creation of sparklines when exporting Excel tables (#7333)
• support sqlalchemy/pandas backed write_database (#7322)
• add adbc database reader and writer (DataFrame.write_database) (#7318)
• make expr.apply streamable in selection context (#7316)
• More ergonomic unnest args (#7310)
• initial working version of Decimal Series (#7220)
• Support explicit Binary dtype in constructor (#7305)
• implement serde for literal datetime and series (#7301)
• improve error message if mmap fails in ipc (#7300)
• add multi-threaded apply (#7277)
• add support for serializing categoricals to json (#7276)
• Add Expr.arg_true (#7056)
• don't require pyarrow for initialising Series with Python datetimes (#7273)
• Excel export support via new write_excel IO method (#7251)
• deprecate describe_(optimized)_plan in favor of explain (#7264)
• enable min-max skipping for binary in parquet, enable min-max skipping for is_in exprs (#7169)
• out of core sort on multiple columns (#7244)
• support nulls_last for multi-column sort (#7242)
• allow optimizations flags in describe_plan (#7233)
• implement row encoding for boolean and binary (#7218)
• allow passing utc=True when parsing time-zone-naive date strings (#7203)
• Add **named_exprs input for struct (#7208)
• add sql "ARRAY_AGG" (#7204)

🐞 Bug fixes

• fix offset in threading apply (#7330)
• fix projection pushdown on join with unused join key (#7326)
• raise error on time -> datetime cast (#7325)
• raise error if output of 'apply' cannot be determined (#7317)
• make pl.struct mappable (#7299)
• err on duplicate with_column names (#7296)
• don't panic on str.parse_int (#7072)
• improve concat_list with empty list error message (#7236)
• fix groupby_dynamic's binning when index_column is time-zone-aware (#7278)
• fix preservation of microseconds when converting Python datetime (#7271)
• fix us precision of datetime to anyvalue conversion (#7268)
• no panic on empty cross join (#7266)
• raise error on ambiguous filter predicates (#7265)
• handle concat_list with first lit value (#7235)
• respect schema in DataFrame initialisation for time-zone-aware datetime (#7240)
• ensure every type is properly normalised (for groupby_dynamic and groupby_rolling) (#7238)
• add test of median function in lazy mode (#7224)
• dont lose precision in pl.date_range due to floating point arithmetic (#7229)
• Conversion of negative timedelta to polars duration (#7209)
• ensure parametric testing cols=int definition respects allowed_dtypes (#7213)

🛠️ Other improvements

• Fix read/write_database tests (#7327)
• Rename scan_ds to scan_pyarrow_dataset (#7320)
• don't run tests that write to disk by default (#7321)
• rename read_sql to read_database (#7315)
• Address git2 vulnerability (#7309)
• Correctly deprecate DataFrame.pearson_corr (#7307)
• Skip write_excel doctests (#7306)
• Run pytest-xdist with worksteal (#7304)
• Rename pearson_corr & spearman_rank_corr (#7014)
• refactor(python) Split io module per type (#7295)
• Move _html module to dataframe module (#7256)
• Enable strict for ruff TCH lints (#7234)
• better select on map_dict dtype (#7217)
• add warning of mmap to ipc docstring (#7216)
• exit non-zero on fix from ruff (#7215)
• ensure that DataFrame and LazyFrame init params don't diverge (#7214)

Thank you to all our contributors for making this release possible!
@MarcoGorelli, @aldanor, @alexander-beedie, @coinflip112, @csko, @dependabot, @dependabot[bot], @ghuls, @josemasar, @josh, @mslapek, @nrebena, @ozgrakkurt, @papparapa, @ptiza, @rben01, @ritchie46, @sorhawell, @stinodego, @universalmind303, @xyning and @zundertj