pydata / pydata/xarray

Should Xarray prefer h5netcdf and scipy to netCDF4?

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#10,657 21 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Description

What is your issue?

https://github.com/pydata/xarray/pull/10656 unifies the choose of default engine parameter for reading and writing netCDF files. This is a breaking change, so it's worth considering if we want to bundle in any other related changes.

I think it might make sense to switch the default netCDF engine to chosen from the first valid choice of (h5netcdf, scipy, netCDF4), rather than the current order of (netCDF4, h5netcdf, scipy), because netCDF is generally a bit slower than the other libraries, and plays less nicely with concurrency (because it's written in C rather than Python).

Any thoughts?

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reviewing pull request #10656, which unifies the default engine selection for reading and writing netCDF files. Compare the proposed (h5netcdf, scipy, netCDF4) order with the current order and assess the stated performance and concurrency tradeoffs; done means reaching and recording a decision about whether the default order should change.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
data
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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