Cycle 5: Astropy as a platform of stability (Clément Robert SSE)

finance/proposal-calls/cycle5/platform-of-stability.md

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+### Astropy as a platform of stability in the astronomy software landscape
+
+### Project Team
+This proposal is to support Clément Robert's continued software engineering work
+on the astropy core library and ecosystem.
+
+### Project Description / Scope of Work
+
+Astropy lies at a unique and critical position in the Python software stack
+supporting astronomy and astrophysics; it is both the core library to a vibrant,
+but domain specific ecosystem, and dependent on hundreds of other packages. As
+such, astropy is required to provide a stable platform for a wide range of
+(constrained) use cases, and should be as resilient as possible to upgrades.
+Furthermore, since existing APIs are used accross vastly diverse contextes, their
+evolution, when deemed necessary, must be handled with care and stretch over
+long time spans.
+
+This FR supports the on-going effort to improve the stability of astropy on 3
+different time scales:
+
+- (immediate term) handling day-to-day compatibility issues throughout the ecosystem
+- (medium term) tackling long standing issues through planned API evolutions
+- (long term) eliminating avoidable failure modes in CI
+
+It short, this is aimed to reduce friction for both users and developers.
+
+Hereafter is a (non-exhaustive) breakdown of more specific issues in the scope of this
+proposal
+
+- providing a high quality bedrock of backward compatibility
+- coordinating with upstream and downstream stake holders to improve testing on a range
+  of deployment environments
+- improve portability and re-usability of binary artifacts (fundamental work was
+  already conducted, and tracked in
+  https://github.com/astropy/astropy/issues/18163, but more can be done in the
+  near future)
+- simplify the development process for most contributors to the core library (reduced build times)
+- improve testability and test coverage of low level extension modules
+- improve long-term maintainability of new APIs through developer documentation
+  and code reviews
+- tackle long standing bugs
+- fix incompatibilities with development versions of core and secondary dependencies as needed
+- extend support to future features of the Python interpreter (like JIT compilation and free-threading)
+  - https://github.com/astropy/astropy/issues/16916
+- handle long-term API evolutions through deprecation cycles
+- solidify deprecation cycle guidelines and utilities
+  - https://github.com/astropy/astropy/issues/18852
+  - https://github.com/astropy/astropy/issues/18951
+
+#### Roadmap Items
+
+The proposed work aligns with the following roadmap items:
+
+- Improve and/or maintain interoperability with performant I/O file formats and libraries such as HDF5 and Dask.
+- Improve support for using Astropy tools in heterogeneous computing environments such as cloud environments or GPU systems.
+- Support JIT compilation (e.g., numba, JAX, etc.) throughout Astropy core and coordinated packages.
+- Increase the learning and mentoring opportunities for people interested in becoming contributors and helping to develop existing contributors into maintainers.
+
+
+#### Project / Work / Deliverables
+
+Minimal (non-exhaustive) and concrete deliverables are listed hereafter:
+
+- reproducible builds in "oldestdeps" testing environments (https://github.com/astropy/astropy/issues/18782) 
+- split out extension modules to a `astropy-core` package (https://github.com/neutrinoceros/astropy-APEs/pull/1)
+- ensure compatibility with PEP 803/809 (the future of CPython's Limited API for 2026)
+  throughout coordinated packages
+- reforge astropy's configuration discovery system to improve maintainability and
+  unblock missing features https://github.com/astropy/astropy/issues/18964
+- developer guidelines for maintainable new APIs (email)
+- detailed, quarterly reports of bug reports closed and PRs reviewed
+
+### Approximate Budget
+Currency: US
+Budget: $50,000 to $80,000
+
+I'm requesting funding for 500 to 800 hours of contractual work, over a performance
+period of one year, and at a rate of 100$/hr.
+I estimate 500 hours as a minimal viable budget to reach a majority of the goals
+previously laid out, but more can be done with a larger budget.
+
+### Period of Performance
+
+2026 (Jan 1 to Dec 31)