PlasmaPy v0.1.0 (2018-04-29)

Version 0.1.0 is the initial development release of PlasmaPy. This version is a prototype and a preview, and is not feature complete. Significant changes to the API are expected to occur between versions 0.1.0 and 0.2.0, including backward incompatible changes.

New Features

  • Composed PlasmaPy’s vision statement.

  • Adopted the Contributor Covenant 3.0.

  • Created a guide on contributing to PlasmaPy.

  • Adopted a permissive BSD 3-clause license with protections against software patents.

  • Set up continuous integration testing with Travis CI, CircleCI, and AppVeyor, along with test coverage checks with Coveralls.

  • Decided upon code and docstring style conventions and set up automated code style checks with pep8speaks.

  • Developed online documentation for PlasmaPy that is hosted by Read the Docs.

    • Automated documentation builds with Sphinx.

    • Wrote narrative documentation for each subpackage.

  • Adopted use of astropy.units as a units package.

  • Created the plasmapy.atomic subpackage to provide easy access to commonly used atomic data.

    • Created a functional interface to access particle properties and find the energy released from nuclear reactions.

    • Created the plasmapy.atomic.Particle class as an object-oriented interface to the plasmapy.atomic subpackage.

    • Created the plasmapy.atomic.particle_input decorator.

  • Created the plasmapy.classes subpackage that includes the prototype plasmapy.classes.Plasma3D, plasmapy.classes.PlasmaBlob, and plasmapy.classes.Species classes.

  • Created the plasmapy.constants subpackage.

  • Created the plasmapy.mathematics subpackage that contains analytical functions commonly used in plasma physics.

  • Created the plasmapy.physics subpackage with its plasmapy.physics.transport module to calculate plasma parameters, transport coefficients, dielectric tensor elements, collision rates, and relativity/quantum physics parameters used in plasma physics.

  • Created the utils subpackage.

    • Created plasmapy.utils.check_quantity and plasmapy.utils.check_relativistic decorators.

    • Created custom exceptions.

    • Added import helper and test helper functionality.

  • Began development of the diagnostics subpackage.

    • Created a module to interpret Langmuir probe data.

  • Created a repository for PlasmaPy Enhancement Proposals.

  • Began using type hint annotations.

  • Set up architecture to incorporate Cython into performance-critical sections of code.

  • Incorporated import and setup tools from the astropy_helpers package.

  • Set up a page describing the Stability of Subpackages.

Changes to API

  • PlasmaPy now has an API.