Make a v2.0 release?

[wjakob]

The next major version of pybind11 has cooking for quite a while, and now I think it has reached a good balance of brand-new features and general usability improvements.

This ticket is to track what's left to do and make sure that nothing is forgotten. The following items come to mind (please let me know if I missed something):

• py::array flags rework (did not make it for v2.0)
• PyPy support (Python 2.7 branch)
• Make sure that there are no release blockers like bugs involving new features
• Update change log
• Merge & tweak reorganized documentation
• Make a new stable v2.0.0 release.
• Upload to PyPi, Conda, etc.
• anything else?

[aldanor]

First point: not happy, because of the flags. I'll have free time next week and am seriously planning to finish that for good, as discussed in a few other issues here and in my fork :) Now that the few other big parts are already in, like the numpy c api, base/owner support etc, this could be the last big incompatible change for numpy module I think.

[wjakob]

@aldanor: ack, then let's wait for your set of flag changes.

[jagerman]

Perhaps some sort of 2.0.0-RC1 release, to let people sticking with stable know it's coming which might prompt them to try it out before the final release (and thus gain some bug reports for unanticipated problems)?

[dean0x7d]

@jagerman: +1 for RC or some kind of pre-release version.

@wjakob: BTW There's an out-of-date v2.0 milestone over here.

There was a brief discussion about splitting up the Advanced documentation. This may be nice to have ready for v2.0 since the Advanced topics page has become a little frightening for first time visitors. I'm not sure if anyone has already been working on this? If not, I can take a stab at it and reorganize it as previously discussed (1. py::class_ wrappers; 2. py::object API; 3. stl, numpy, eigen casters).

One other thing I wanted to propose was making py::str(arg) do the expected thing, i.e. convert arg into a string. This would deprecate the object::str() member function since having both is a weird gotcha for beginners. Would there be any interest in that?

[jagerman]

Oh, yes, rearranging the docs would be a very nice thing to have for 2.0! I thought about it briefly, but don't really have the time to work on it at the moment. I do think it reached the point a while ago where it's not only daunting for first-time users, but is also not easy for repeat users to quickly find things via the menu. Perhaps moving Advanced to a 3-level organization would work? E.g. keep "Advanced topics" but only have 4-5 general categories within it, with sub-items within those?

[dean0x7d]

Yeah, a little bit of nesting would be good for navigation. I can set up a readthedocs.org fork for a pull request. That way everyone can see the changes properly (in html instead of the raw .rst files) and comment before committing to anything.

[wjakob]

There was a brief discussion about splitting up the Advanced documentation. This may be nice to have ready for v2.0 since the Advanced topics page has become a little frightening for first time visitors. I'm not sure if anyone has already been working on this? If not, I can take a stab at it and reorganize it as previously discussed (1. py::class_ wrappers; 2. py::object API; 3. stl, numpy, eigen casters).

At this point any kind of hierarchical organization will be better than the crazy advanced.rst ;). If you want to take a stab at it, then that sounds all good to me.

One other thing I wanted to propose was making py::str(arg) do the expected thing, i.e. convert arg into a string. This would deprecate the object::str() member function since having both is a weird gotcha for beginners. Would there be any interest in that?

This sounds good to me. One annoying gotcha that might be nice to address at the same time is that std::cout << myObject.str() << std::endl; uses the operator bool() conversion by default unless pybind11/stl.h is included. The fact that this compiles and just writes "1" or "0" can be very confusing and hard to track down.

[wjakob]

@aldanor: any updates on the flags rework? I'd be happy to comment on partial patches.

[aldanor]

@wjakob yep WIP, will keep you posted, the other two seemingly easy PRs took a bit longer than I thought :) The numpy scalars got merged in, but the typed iterators I'll probably finish later, after the flags are done.

[ghisvail]

Any provisional ETA for the v2.0 release folks? Cheers,

[ghisvail]

Right now Debian ships version 1.8.1, but I could push version 2.0 if the latter is to be released quite soon.

[jagerman]

@ghisvail -- I'd expect 2.0 to be out in time for stretch. Speaking as a debian user, it would also be much nicer to have 2.0 in stretch than 1.8.1.

[wjakob]

@ghisvail: That's awesome -- I didn't know pybind11 even had a Debian package ;). By when do you need us to push v2.0 for it to make stretch?