Release v2.10

[IAlibay]

We want a new release of v2.10 ahead of the 2025 UGM.

Target release start date: ASAP (latest 15th October)

Blocking PRs:

• Add initial python 3.14 support and bump up in line with SPEC0 #5121
• Optimize the calculation speed of InterRDF_s  #5073
• Fix incorrect unit conversion factors in units.py #5053

@MDAnalysis/coredevs is there anything else you want to do include in this release?

[orbeckst]

(I merged PR #5113 , which wasn't on the original list, an hour ago as it was complete.)

[orbeckst]

No more PRs from my side to include urgently.

[IAlibay]

Ok since no one else raised anything else, we will go ahead with the release.

[orbeckst]

Are we making the conda-forge imdclient package a full dependency of the MDAnalysis cf package? I thought so but that shapes a bit how to write PR MDAnalysis/UserGuide#430

(For the pip package it's optional in extras.)

[IAlibay]

@orbeckst - I'm strongly voting no here. I'm not sure there's much room for discussion. As far as I can tell imdclient imports MDAnalysis. We can't have a package that depends on MDAnalysis also be a dependency of MDAnalysis, that's how we ended up breaking the MDA package and causing a ton of headaches with circular imports.

[orbeckst]

imdclient does not have MDAnalysis as a dependency (only for tests). It only depends on numpy.

[IAlibay]

I see, thanks for the clarification. I still vote no - I don't want to add more work to this release.

[IAlibay]

(I note, given it's not a hard dependency block - this is a coredev vote [unless it becomes a headache / too much work])

[orbeckst]

Ok, I defer to you here.

We can revisit in the future (given that other file format packages such as gsd, h5py, pytng are bundled – https://github.com/conda-forge/mdanalysis-feedstock/blob/9f699f3281a3ab29b7594404e3c6c457b197d6df/recipe/meta.yaml#L36 ).

[orbeckst]

Future discussion:

• I don't see chemfiles in the run deps of the cf package. When did we drop that one? (It provides additional flexibility and formats.)
• We also don't have RDKit installed automatically. (Important for "chemistry aware MDAnalysis")
• We could probably just add duecredit. (Encourage citation best practices.)

[IAlibay]

@orbeckst my suggestion is that we do a release with the cf package deps "as-is". In the meantime, if you (or another coredev) can start the discussion on voting for "what deps should we ship with", we can do another build release with more deps.

Edit: when I say "build release", I mean we just increment the 2.10 build on conda-forge, with more/less deps.

[orbeckst]

Totally agree!