[AstroPy] [ANN] PyFITS 3.0.9 and 3.1.0 Released

[Erik Bray]

I'm pleased to announce the releases of PyFITS 3.0.9 and 3.1.0.  This is 
probably the first time for the PyFITS project to do a dual release.

Version 3.0.9 is a minor bug fix release building on 3.0.8 and the rest 
of the 3.0.x series.  The changelog for 3.0.9 can be read here: 
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyfits/3.0.9

Version 3.1.0 has been almost a year in the making.  It incorporates all 
the bug fixes from 3.0.9 and previous 3.0.x releases, as well as more 
bug fixes, and many new features and API changes.  It should be noted 
for users of STSCI_PYTHON that this is the same version of PyFITS that 
is included in the recent STSCI_PYTHON 2.13 release.

The reason for this dual release is that 3.1 contains enough changes 
that many users may not wish to switch to it right away for production 
use. The biggest differences include a new Header API, and the use of 
mmap by default for reading FITS data from disk. I strongly recommend 
testing all your software with 3.1 before using it in production.  Also 
be sure to read the full release notes at 
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyfits/3.1

The new Header API is mostly compatible with existing code, but there 
are a few corner cases where it may not be (most notably the 
Header.keys() method, and the behavior of slicing Headers).  A detailed 
description of the Header changes can be read at 
http://pyfits.readthedocs.org/en/latest/appendix/header_transition.html

The 3.0.x series will continue to receive support in the form of bug fix 
releases for some time to come before ending support and switching fully 
over to the 3.1.x series.

(Note: PyFITS 3.0.9 was actually released via PyPI a few days earlier, 
but I fell ill and didn't have time to finish the 3.1 release.)


Installation Notes for PyFITS 3.1
=================================

For several versions now PyFITS has relied on a setup of installation 
utilities in a package called stsci.distutils 
(http://pypi.python.org/pypi/stsci.distutils).  Normally, when 
installing PyFITS, stsci.distutils will automatically be downloaded and 
bootstrapped to your Python interpreter, so it's not necessary to take 
any action.

However, if you have stsci.distutils installed into your site-packages, 
it may be necessary to upgrade it to install PyFITS 3.1, which requires 
stsci.distutils >= 0.3.  In particular, if you get an "VersionConflict" 
error when trying to install PyFITS, this is probably because you need 
to update stsci.distutils first.  This can be done with easy_install or pip:

$ easy_install -U "stsci.distutils>=0.3"

or

$ pip install --upgrade "stsci.distutils>=0.3"

Otherwise, installation of pyfits is the same, using easy_install or 
pip, or by manually downloading and unpacking the source and running 
`python setup.py install`.


Downloads
=========

At the time of writing, the STScI website for PyFITS has not been 
updated (still waiting on IT to push the updated pages to production). 
In the meantime PyFITS 3.0.9 can still by downloaded from PyPI:

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyfits/3.0.9
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyfits/3.1

Thanks, and let me know if you have any issues.

Erik B.