Merge pull request #267 from astrofrog/cycle3-aperio-infrastructure-maintenance

Phase 3 Funding: Infrastructure and core/coordinated package maintenance (Aperio Software)

Author: eteq

finance/proposal-calls/cycle3/Aperio-Infrastructure-Maintenance.md

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+## Infrastructure and core/coordinated package maintenance
+
+### Project team
+
+This proposal is to fund the following people at
+[Aperio Software](https://aperiosoftware.com):
+
+* Thomas Robitaille
+* Stuart Mumford
+* Drew Leonard
+
+This could also fund other individuals working at Aperio Software if needed.
+
+### Project Summary
+
+This project covers three main areas of work:
+
+* Maintenance of project infrastructure (such as pytest and sphinx plugins,
+  extension-helpers, continuous integration, wheel building, and so on). As
+  illustrated in
+  [astropy/astropy-project#118](https://github.com/astropy/astropy-project/issues/118),
+  the infrastructure for the project has grown significantly over the last few
+  years, and requires regular maintenance.
+* Maintenance and development of the
+  [astropy.timeseries](https://docs.astropy.org/en/stable/timeseries/) and
+  [astropy.visualization.wcsaxes](https://docs.astropy.org/en/stable/visualization/wcsaxes/)
+  sub-packages as well as the [reproject](http://reproject.readthedocs.io) and
+  [astropy-healpix](https://astropy-healpix.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)
+  coordinated packages.
+
+### Project / work
+
+#### Infrastructure work
+
+We will participate in the maintenance of the existing project infrastructure,
+which includes:
+
+* pytest plugins and pytest-astropy
+* sphinx plugins and sphinx-astropy
+* extension-helpers
+* auto-release infrastructure (such as the automated building of wheels)
+* benchmarks
+
+In addition to fixing issues with these, we will continue to work on trying to
+simplify the maintenance burden for the infrastructure by adopting wherever
+possible existing technologies and workflows rather than maintaining our own.
+
+We will also work on infrastructure tools being developed under the
+OpenAstronomy umbrella which are used by Astropy as well as e.g. Sunpy - this
+includes for example workflows for GitHub Actions which are being used in the
+Astropy organization.
+
+Finally, we will work on fully developing the integration testing started at
+https://github.com/astropy/integration-testing which aims to ultimately
+frequently test the interoperability of the whole ecosystem of core and
+coordinated packages.
+
+#### astropy.timeseries
+
+The [astropy.timeseries](https://docs.astropy.org/en/stable/timeseries/)
+sub-package is currently not very actively maintained, so as part of this
+project we will aim to address some of the [open
+issues](https://github.com/astropy/astropy/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3Atimeseries)
+including both bug fixes and feature requests.
+
+#### astropy.visualization.wcsaxes
+
+We propose to continue maintaining the
+[astropy.visualization.wcsaxes](https://docs.astropy.org/en/stable/visualization/wcsaxes/)
+sub-package, which is used to make plots of a wide range of different data with
+any APE 14-compliant WCS. We will work on some of the [open
+issues](https://github.com/astropy/astropy/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3Avisualization.wcsaxes)
+as well as new issues that come up, and will also investigate ways of improving
+the performance of the plotting.
+
+#### reproject
+
+The [reproject](https://github.com/astropy/reproject) coordinated package, which
+implements different image reprojection algorithms, is not very actively
+maintained currently. With funding, we will be able to address a number of the
+[open issues](https://github.com/astropy/reproject/issues) and carry out new
+releases incorporating those fixes. We will work on stabilizing the API with the
+goal to release v1.0.0 during this funding cycle.
+
+#### astropy-healpix
+
+Similarly to reproject, the
+[astropy-healpix](https://github.com/astropy/astropy-healpix) coordinated
+package is in need of maintenance, and also needs some decisions to be made
+regarding the API. Once these decisions are resolved, we will target releasing
+v1.0.0 of the package during the funding cycle.
+
+### Budget
+
+Project participants will ideally work 12h/week on this project in total -
+assuming 48 weeks (to account for holidays!) gives a total of **USD 86,400**
+assuming an hourly rate of USD 150/hour. The minimum useful budget to carry out
+some of the work here would be 6h/week in total, which gives a total of **USD 43,200**.
+
+### Approved Budget
+$86,400