add blog/2020-12-26-year-in-review.md

Co-authored-by: beckermr <[email protected]>

Author: jaimergp

blog/2020-12-26-year-in-review.md

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+---
+authors:
+  - core
+tags: [conda-forge]
+---
+
+# 2020 in Review
+
+As 2020 winds down, the Core team thought it'd be fun to review some of
+the big accomplishments our community has made this year.
+
+## Strong Growth
+
+The `conda-forge` community has grown immensely this year. Here are some
+numbers to help give you an idea of the scale of our growth.
+
+-   The community has added 3,751 new, unique `conda` packages this
+    year, along with a corresponding number of new feedstocks.
+-   For the majority of 2020, the `conda-forge` channel on
+    `anaconda.org` exceeded 100 million downloads per month.
+-   In July of 2020, the `conda-forge` channel passed 2 billion total,
+    all-time downloads.
+-   We've grown our core developer community, adding seven new members
+    to the `conda-forge` Core team and at least two members to the
+    `staged-recipes` team.
+-   We now have over 2,500 recipe maintainers in the `conda-forge`
+    GitHub organization.
+
+## Big New Features
+
+We've also shipped a ton of big updates to our core infrastructure this
+year. These updates include
+
+-   `PyPy` **support**: We added support for `PyPy` 3.6 and now supply
+    one of the biggest stacks of `PyPy`-enabled packages in the `PyPy`
+    ecosystem.
+-   **automerge**: We now support the automatic merging of PRs on
+    feedstocks using the `automerge` label or through an opt-in setting
+    in the `conda-forge.yml`.
+-   `R` **4.0 migration**: This migration was the first one to use our
+    `automerge` infrastructure at scale. With it, we completed a
+    complete rebuild/upgrade of the `R` ecosystem in about a week.
+-   `Python` **updates**: We deprecated `Python` 2.7, completed the
+    `Python` 3.8 migration, and got about 75% of the way through the
+    `Python` 3.9 migration.
+-   **compiler upgrades**: We upgraded our compiler infrastructure to
+    `GCC` 9 and `clang` 11.
+-   **CentOS 7 and CentOS 6 EOL**: We shipped an option to enable our
+    compilers to use the CentOS 7 `sysroot` in preparation for the
+    CentOS 6 EOL. We hope to complete the move to CentOS 7 early next
+    year.
+-   **miniforge**: We built our own standalone, `miniconda`-like
+    installers. These support a broad range of platforms, including
+    `osx-arm64` and `linux-aarch64`.
+-   **standalone Windows stack**: We fully decoupled our Windows recipes
+    from the `defaults` channel by rebuilding the `msys2` recipes.
+-   **Apple silicon support**: We added support for Apple silicon with
+    our `osx-arm64` platform. This platform is our first one to use a
+    fully cross-compiled infrastructure.
+-   **CUDA support**: We added support for building CUDA packages on
+    windows and added CUDA 11.0 support.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+We know that this year has been extremely difficult for so many of our
+community members and that the fantastic success of `conda-forge` would
+not have been possible without the active participation and support of
+our community. **Thank you everyone so much for the work you put into**
+`conda-forge` **this year, making it the wonderful, community-led
+resource that it is.**
+
+We wish everyone a happy, healthy, and peaceful new year!