Reading HDF5 files based on OpenPMD

We’re currently working on developing a new Plasma subclass. It is supposed to read HDF5 files that are based on OpenPMD standard and we have a sort of prototype ready in #500. It should be ready to merge once we figure out how we are supposed to handle the example datasets for our tests. It probably isn’t a good idea to ship them with the main PlasmaPy codebase. I guess we’re going to settle downloading them on the fly when running our tests. Let’s see.

I had trouble getting OpenPMD-api to install from source and with spack package manager but the guys at OpenPMD are really helpful and updated their documentation appropriately real quick (openPMD/openPMD-api#279)!

As an update from my last blog post on our coveragerc problems; in the end we decided to settle with #502. The problem is that PlasmaPy and SunPy (maybe also other projects?) depend on Astropy’s testing modules which is the root cause of the problem. We’ve had some discussion in astropy/astropy-helpers#397. However, @Cadiar is still messing around with it in SunPy and has made progress in sunpy/sunpy#2667. Hopefully, astropy will go through some refactoring too and then we could all live peacefully.

Some other cool stuff that happened during this period. We increased coverage in our langmuir.py module in #498. There are still some corners where could increase coverage a bit, I think I am going to make more PRs soon. I remember we had 99% code coverage in March then it dropped to somewhere around 92% shortly after we had our first release. I am glad we made it back to 98% as of now!

Oh, I almost forgot! I received my first stipend a few days back! I’ve never earned more in my whole life before this, not even a quarter to be honest. I am not sure what I am going to do with it for now. Maybe get a new lappy? A musical instrument? Pay the bills? Donate to a cause? No idea but it makes me happy to think about stuff! :D

That’s all folks. Stay happy, have fun!