Skip to content

Roadmap updates from the SPlaC #476

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Open
wants to merge 4 commits into
base: main
Choose a base branch
from
Open
Show file tree
Hide file tree
Changes from all commits
Commits
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension

Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
20 changes: 18 additions & 2 deletions roadmap/COMPLETED.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -1,9 +1,25 @@
# Roadmap Completed Items

This document is a list of former Astropy Roadmap items that have been removed because they have been completed.
This document is a list of former Astropy Roadmap items that have been removed because they have been completed.
They are listed by the date of the revision they were first removed from.
This document is in reverse chronological order.

## July 2025

### Infrastructure, Documentation

- Revive dashboards for developers (CI status etc) and community (PR trends etc).
- Improve documentation for infrastructure setup, as well as the developer documentation.

### Learn and User Support

- Update Astropy website to improve the visibility of Astropy Learn.

### Governance, Management, and Personnel

- Develop a process for recruiting, selecting, and managing personnel to complete Project priorities that require external labor.
- Document the process for taking on a formal role in the Astropy project.

## June 2024

### Infrastructure, Documentation
Expand All @@ -28,7 +44,7 @@ This document is in reverse chronological order.
### Functionality
- Improve support and validation for input/output of standard file formats used in Astronomy including ASDF and ECSV as well as compression handling and enhanced support for large tables.

### Hardware
### Hardware
- Improve support for ARM Macs.

### Government, Management, and Personnel
Expand Down
60 changes: 33 additions & 27 deletions roadmap/roadmap.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
# The Astropy Roadmap
**Latest revision: June 2024**
**Latest revision: July 2025**

- [Introduction](#Introduction)
- [Status Legend](#Status-Legend)
Expand All @@ -9,27 +9,29 @@
- [Hardware and Performance](#Hardware-and-Performance)
- [Learn and User Support](#Learn-and-User-Support)
- [Community Building and Sustainability](#Community-Building-and-Sustainability)
- [Government, Management, and Personnel](#government-management-and-personnel)
- [Governance, Management, and Personnel](#Governance-Management-and-Personnel)


See the [Roadmap Completed Items](COMPLETED.md) page for items that have been completed and removed from the roadmap.

## Introduction

This Roadmap captures high level actionable items that we as a project aim to undertake to improve the health and stability of the Astropy project. The Roadmap itself is a static document, however it will be revisited regularly at the Astropy coordination meetings, to keep track of progress and write new versions as needed.
This Roadmap captures high level actionable items that we as a project aim to undertake to improve the health and stability of the Astropy project. The Roadmap itself is a static document, however it will be revisited regularly at the Astropy coordination meetings or via pull requests, to keep track of progress and write new versions as needed.

This Roadmap may also be used to prioritize the allocation of Project resources.

## Status Legend

### Green :green_circle:
- Group or person leading effort is identified and sufficiently supported.
- Effort is already underway and/or expected to be implemented in the “near term.”

### Orange :large_orange_diamond:
### Orange :large_orange_diamond:
- Item is already defined (e.g., issue, APE exists), but not sufficiently underway.
- Attempts to secure the necessary resources are underway.
- Attempts to secure the necessary resources are underway.
- *For example, funding applied for, but not awarded.*
### Red :red_square:

### Red :red_square:
- Consensus of the community is that the item is a priority.
- Attempts to secure the necessary resources have not yet been started.
- *For example, there’s no one available to write a funding proposal or lead recruitment efforts.*
Expand All @@ -43,29 +45,33 @@ The core product of the Astropy Project is high quality astronomical software, i

- :green_circle: Add quantity support for non-NumPy arrays.

- :large_orange_diamond: Provide next-generation spectroscopic reduction tools usable by individual researchers and larger surveys.
- :red_square: Determine a plan for long-term support of FITS, while also improving performance and making contribution easier.

- :large_orange_diamond: Improve support for reading and writing ASDF throughout the Astropy ecosystem (e.g., coordinated packages).

## Infrastructure, Documentation
- :large_orange_diamond: Improve support for reading and writing spectra using the IVOA SpectrumDM.

Underlying all Astropy packages is critical infrastructure that ensures high quality, well-documented software is released. This category encompasses goals having to do with such infrastructure and documentation.
- :red_square: Identify and ensure progress on longstanding issues that should be high priority (e.g., issues in io.votable).

## Infrastructure, Documentation

- :green_circle: Implement robust performance benchmark reporting.
Underlying all Astropy packages is critical infrastructure that ensures high quality, well-documented software is released. This category encompasses goals having to do with such infrastructure and documentation.

- :green_circle: Revive dashboards for developers (CI status etc) and community (PR trends etc).

- :green_circle: Improve documentation for infrastructure setup, as well as the developer documentation.
- :large_orange_diamond: Maintain and improve robust performance benchmark reporting.

- :large_orange_diamond: Improve integration of core package and coordinated package documentation from a user perspective (e.g., joint search functionality).

## Interoperability and compatibility

One of the core principles of the Astropy Project is to "foster an ecosystem of interoperable astronomy packages." This category encompasses goals related to that principle of interoperability and compatibility.

- :green_circle: Improve support and validation for input/output (I/O) of standard file formats used in astronomy by improving the unified I/O system: allowing user added classes/formats, and implementing GWCS.
- :green_circle: Improve support and validation for input/output (I/O) of standard and user-defined file formats used in astronomy by improving the unified I/O system.

- :large_orange_diamond: Improve interoperability between unit packages (e.g., `astropy.units`, `pint`, `unyt`).

- :large_orange_diamond: Encourage usage of the core and coordinated package ecosystem more directly (e.g., provide an `astropy-ecosystem` metapackage, or change `astropy` to `astropy-core` and make `astropy` the metapackage).

- :red_square: Unify unit packages (e.g., `astropy.units`, `pint`, `unyt`).


## Hardware and Performance

Expand All @@ -77,41 +83,41 @@ Astronomers perform their work in a variety of computing environments with a var

- :red_square: Add basic PyScript/WebAssembly support in Astropy.

- :red_square: Support JIT compilation (e.g., numba, JAX, etc.) throughout Astropy core and coordinated packages.


## Learn and User Support

The Astropy Project cannot succeed in its core objectives without a robust user onboarding and support system. This category is for items related to the Astropy Learn ecosystem and other user support related improvements.

- :green_circle: Generate and ingest guides and/or a series of tutorials that demonstrate Astropy Project functionality in the context of astronomical research.

- :large_orange_diamond: Update Astropy website to improve the visibility of Astropy Learn and overall reflect the Project as a whole, not just the core package.
- :red_square: Update Astropy website to reflect the Project as a whole, not just the core package.

- :large_orange_diamond: Develop tutorials that demonstrate the use of Astropy for spectroscopy tasks.
- :green_circle: Develop tutorials that demonstrate the use of Astropy for spectroscopy tasks.

- :red_square: Expand and build on workshop offerings, including online and increased geographic coverage.

- :red_square: Develop/harvest tutorials suitable for use in university astronomy courses.

- :large_orange_diamond: Develop, host, and index tutorials suitable for use in university astronomy courses.

## Community Building and Sustainability

As a community-driven project, the long term health and development of the Astropy community is an intrinsic part of the Project. This category encompasses goals related to growing and maintaining that community, and ensuring that it adheres to the core principles of inclusion and consensus-building.

- :green_circle: Better understand Astropy user community through user surveys (Organization mycologey reports: [Astropy Community Engagement](https://astropy-report.orgmycology.com), [Community views on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Astropy project](https://astropy-dei.orgmycology.com)).
- :green_circle: Better understand Astropy user community through user and developer surveys (e.g., [Astropy User Survey](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1D2L8PE3gbzaIvgmlTmhoSD5f0QLAln0HbCghZmdgmeQ/edit?usp=sharing) and Organization Mycology surveys on [Astropy Community Engagement](https://astropy-report.orgmycology.com) and [Community views on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Astropy project](https://astropy-dei.orgmycology.com)).

- :red_square: Increase the learning and mentoring opportunities for people interested in becoming contributors and helping to develop existing contributors into maintainers.

- :red_square: Increase inclusion, diversity, and empowerment efforts within the Astropy Project and NumFOCUS communities, and improve our understanding of the demographics of our communities in order to measure the effectiveness of these efforts.

- :red_square: Ensure people who contribute are from a broad experience base, including typical astronomers.

## Government, Management, and Personnel

This category encompasses goals related to governing and managing the teams of the Astropy Project to facilitate reaching the goals described elsewhere in this document.
## Governance, Management, and Personnel

- :green_circle: Develop a process for recruiting, selecting, and managing personnel to complete Project priorities that require external labor.
This category encompasses goals related to governing and managing the Astropy Project to facilitate reaching the goals described elsewhere in this document.

- :large_orange_diamond: Adopt the NumFOCUS Code of Conduct (CoC) and build a community ombuds/CoC team to curate the guidelines and enforce them.
- :green_circle: Adopt the NumFOCUS Code of Conduct (CoC) and build a community ombuds/CoC team to curate the guidelines and enforce them.

- :large_orange_diamond: Document the process for taking on a formal role in the Astropy project and recruit for unfilled team positions.
- :red_square: Recruit for unfilled team positions.

- :green_circle: Define and staff the strategic planning role.