Python Polars 1.42.1

⚠️ Deprecations

• Deprecate strict parameter of pl.concat, replace with new how='horizontal_extend' (#27965)

🚀 Performance improvements

• Add a sampled resolve mode for multi-file parquet metadata (#28111)
• Speed up small dtype series sums with a upcast sum kernel (#27958)
• Don't block on path expansion (#28073)

✨ Enhancements

• Close ResourceWarning leaks in database tests (#28066)

🐞 Bug fixes

• Incorrect sorted fast-path returning nan for grouped max (#28129)
• Fix panic on scan_parquet filter of fixed-size binary column (#28122)
• Fix decimal dynamic float cast (#28126)
• Fix pyiceberg key dot HDFS prefix filter (#28109)
• Fix projection pushdown panic on select(len()) after groupby (#28108)
• Fully resolve remaining ResourceWarning leaks in database/iceberg tests (#28107)
• Expiry time loading for AWS DeferredRefreshableCredentials (#28099)
• Close ResourceWarning leaks in database tests (#28066)
• Avoid panic on temporal extraction for datetime columns with nulls (#28054)
• Prevent panic in replace when old/new contain Expr or object dtype values (#27433)

📖 Documentation

• Fix dataset regression in the examples (#28131)
• Emphasize to generally not ever write Rust tests (#28082)
• Mention Polars skill in User Guide's LLM section (#28113)

🛠️ Other improvements

• Disallow usage of tokio::spawn in clippy (#28123)
• Improve Makefile with respect to venv robustness (#28110)
• Remove legacy prelude glob imports from leaf files (#28114)
• Skip pandas 3.0.4 due to pd.TimeDelta segfault (#28125)
• Update mypy to the new 2.x release (#28116)
• Ensure pyrefly checks run as part of make pre-commit (#28095)
• Fix test_select_explode_height_filter_order_by failure when POLARS_MAX_THREADS=2 (#28090)
• Add Morsel::height (#28060)

Thank you to all our contributors for making this release possible!
@0guban0v, @Kevin-Patyk, @TNieuwdorp, @alexander-beedie, @azimafroozeh, @dsprenkels, @kdn36, @nameexhaustion, @orlp, @raphaelroshan, @ritchie46 and @sar-cheng