Merge branch 'main' into fix/consistent-create-array-signature

Author: d-v-b

changes/2871.feature.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+Added public API for Buffer ABCs and implementations.
+
+Use :mod:`zarr.buffer` to access buffer implementations, and
+:mod:`zarr.abc.buffer` for the interface to implement new buffer types.
+
+Users previously importing buffer from ``zarr.core.buffer`` should update their
+imports to use :mod:`zarr.buffer`. As a reminder, all of ``zarr.core`` is
+considered a private API that's not covered by zarr-python's versioning policy.

docs/user-guide/config.rst

@@ -63,7 +63,7 @@ This is the current default configuration::
                                        'variable-length-string': {'name': 'vlen-utf8'}},
             'write_empty_chunks': False},
    'async': {'concurrency': 10, 'timeout': None},
-   'buffer': 'zarr.core.buffer.cpu.Buffer',
+   'buffer': 'zarr.buffer.cpu.Buffer',
    'codec_pipeline': {'batch_size': 1,
                      'path': 'zarr.core.codec_pipeline.BatchedCodecPipeline'},
    'codecs': {'blosc': 'zarr.codecs.blosc.BloscCodec',
@@ -78,5 +78,5 @@ This is the current default configuration::
                'zstd': 'zarr.codecs.zstd.ZstdCodec'},
    'default_zarr_format': 3,
    'json_indent': 2,
-   'ndbuffer': 'zarr.core.buffer.cpu.NDBuffer',
+   'ndbuffer': 'zarr.buffer.cpu.NDBuffer',
    'threading': {'max_workers': None}}

docs/user-guide/extending.rst

@@ -83,7 +83,10 @@ Coming soon.
 Custom array buffers
 --------------------
 
-Coming soon.
+Zarr-python provides control over where and how arrays stored in memory through
+:mod:`zarr.buffer`. Currently both CPU (the default) and GPU implementations are
+provided (see :ref:`user-guide-gpu` for more). You can implement your own buffer
+classes by implementing the interface defined in :mod:`zarr.abc.buffer`.
 
 Other extensions
 ----------------