Python Polars 0.17.6

🚀 Performance improvements

• optimize join inner materialization of single keys (#8405)
• parallelize sorted group tuple materialization (#8387)
• improve materialization of huge cardinality group tuples (#8382)
• improve group_tuples materialization (#8375)
• conversion speedups from polars int64 timestamps to python temporal types:
  • ~35% faster → python date (#8339)
  • ~15% faster → python time (#8352)
  • ~10% faster → python datetime (#8339)

✨ Enhancements

• allow existing item method to optionally take row/col indices (#8412)
• allow negative 'arange' expression (#8413)
• warn if argument is not explicitly sorted (#8409)
• .to_numpy(use_pyarrow=False) for Object and Boolean (#8397)
• new hypothesis strategy that can generate data for List dtypes (#8400)
• offer cleaner usage pattern for Config object in context-manager context (#8394)
• add support for SQL "IN" expr (#8396)
• add a "signed" param to Series.is_integer (#8383)
• add is_integer (#8373)
• raise error on invalid dict aggregation (#8371)
• cli output mode & sql read_json (#8336)
• more informative keyerror on invalid getitem (#8320)

🐞 Bug fixes

• infer supertype in json serde (#8411)
• duration on empty df (#8403)
• don't inadvertently set Series initialised with nested tuple data as Object dtype (#8401)
• use physical in streaming unique global table (#8390)
• recursively bubble up all dtypes in list cast (#8386)
• is_in struct logical types (#8378)
• fix nested null parquet read (#8372)
• fix logical type in ListChunked::new_from_index (#8367)
• fix unintentional loading of hypothesis profile (#8362)
• bubble up logical type in recursive list cast (#8356)
• ensure that iter_rows doesn't return nested Timestamp values (#8359)
• implement clone_inner for all series (#8357)
• add missing __hash__ support to Field, include "time_zone" in Datetime hash, fix Struct hash (#8354)
• fix fill_null for categorical (#8353)
• time.cast(str) as strftime (#8351)
• fix logical dtypes in parallel list collection (#8349)
• improve logical types of explode operation (#8348)
• logical type in anonymous list builders (#8346)
• address potential error caused by float division on time_unit scaling (#8337)
• escape csv header names if they contain special chars (#8331)
• nested struct/list/categorical logical/physical (#8334)
• fix struct schema argument (#8327)
• fix precision issue when converting pl.Datetime("ms") to Python datetime (#8332)
• fix deserialize empty list (#8326)
• List<Null> consistency (#8325)
• fix coalesce schema (#8324)
• don't do null propagation (#8322)
• validate window_size user input in rolling_expr (#8318)
• ensure invalid list eval raises (#8317)
• fix typing overloads of read_excel (#8300)

🛠️ Other improvements

• new hypothesis strategy that can generate data for List dtypes (#8400)
• update duration docstring/example (#8392)
• Upgrade ruff (#8380)
• enhanced parametric testing for temporal dtypes (#8347)
• Minor update to strptime (#8345)
• adjust pytest config so as not to inadvertently prevent test debugging in IPython consoles (#8308)
• add newline in pl.DataFrame.pivot docs (#8307)

Thank you to all our contributors for making this release possible!
@JoonHong-Kim, @MarcoGorelli, @StefanBRas, @alexander-beedie, @avimallu, @grantmcdermott, @jonashaag, @rben01, @ritchie46, @stinodego and @universalmind303