Python Polars 0.18.8

⚠️ Deprecations

• Add Series.extend (#9901)
• Deprecate functions series input (#9878)

🚀 Performance improvements

• Rolling min/max for partially sorted data (#9819)
• Use pyo3::intern to avoid needlessly recreating PyString (#9853)

✨ Enhancements

• Name transpose from column (#9846)
• adds SQRT, CBRT, PI functions to SQLContext (#9936)
• Let qcut create evenly spaced probabilities (#9960)
• add freeze_panes option to write_excel (#9974)
• initial support for parsing the set of jump bytecode instructions required to reconstruct and/or logic (#9972)
• suggest more efficient expression if user passes simple lambda to Expr.apply or DataFrame.apply (#9918)
• sorted flag on singletons (#9933)
• maintain sorted flag after partition_by (#9944)
• keep sorted flag in streaming left join (#9932)
• Add cloudpickle for serializing python UDFs (#9921)
• Optional three-valued logic for any/all (#9848)
• Add Series.extend (#9901)
• pass through unknown schema in unnest (#9896)
• convenience support for parsing a list of SQL strings with sql_expr (#9881)
• respect and allow more options in eager json parsing (#9882)
• allow set_sorted in streaming (#9876)
• Expr.cat.get_categories expression (#9869)
• add LENGTH and OCTET_LENGTH string functions for SQL (#9860)
• polars_warn! macro (#9868)

🐞 Bug fixes

• fix incorrect state in projection pushdown with joins (#9987)
• don't pass predicates referring to renamed literal… (#9965)
• fix regression in regex expansion (#9952)
• potential SO in csv infer schema (#9950)
• raise on unsupported transpose and object types (#9946)
• Fix as-of join when by groups are interleaved (#9938)
• Handle DataFrame.extend extending by itself (#9897)
• don't SO on align_frames (#9911)
• respect original series dtype when constructing LitIter (#9886)
• Handle DataFrame.vstack stacking itself (#9895)
• sum aggregation empty set is 0, not null (#9894)
• preserve expression aliases when parsing SQL with pl.sql_expr (#9875)
• fmt unknown dtype (#9872)

🛠️ Other improvements

• Update autolabeler again (#9984)
• use param_name more in udfs for greater defensiveness (#9969)
• fix or/and docstrings to say bitwise, not logical (#9964)
• minor fix for apply docstring example text (#9953)
• add note that collect_all returns result frames in the same order as input (#9951)
• Improve docstrings for renaming operations (#9942)
• Move sink_* methods to IO chapter (#9939)
• Add 'nearest' in Expr.interpolation docstring with an example (#9935)
• fix hyperlinks to pandas (#9937)
• Address ignored Ruff doc rules (#9919)
• improve weekday, day, ordinal_day examples (#9926)
• deprecate bins argument and rename to breaks in Series.cut (#9913)
• Use Pathlib everywhere (#9914)
• Add various unit tests (#9903)
• add big warnings about using apply (#9906)
• Update autolabeler (#9885)
• Workaround for PyCharm deprecation warning (#9907)
• Mention func_horizontal on deprecated func docstrings (#9863)
• note ordering guarantee for groupby (#9879)
• add logo link entry to sphinx conf and factor-out website root paths (#9864)

Thank you to all our contributors for making this release possible!
@0xbe7a, @JulianCologne, @MarcoGorelli, @OneRaynyDay, @SeanTroyUWO, @StefanBRas, @alexander-beedie, @c-peters, @fsimkovic, @ion-elgreco, @magarick, @mcrumiller, @messense, @ritchie46, @sorhawell, @stinodego, @thomasaarholt and @zundertj