pydata / pydata/xarray

Rules for propagating attrs and encoding

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Description

We need to come up with some clear rules for when and how xarray should propagate metadata (attrs/encoding). This has come up routinely (e.g. #25, #138, #442, #688, #828, #988, #1009, #1271, #1297, #1586) and we don't have a clear direction as to when to keep/drop metadata.

I'll take a first cut:

operation attrs encoding status
reduce drop drop
arithmetic drop drop implemented
copy keep keep
concat keep first keep first implemented
slice keep drop
where keep keep

cc @shoyer (following up on https://github.com/pydata/xarray/issues/1586#issuecomment-334954046)

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

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 the proposed attrs/encoding table and the referenced issues #25, #138, #442, #688, #828, #988, #1009, #1271, #1297, and #1586. The work is complete only when the project has agreed clear propagation rules for each listed operation and the rules are implemented consistently.

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
20/100

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