Iris Core + Plugins

[trexfeathers]

Separating Iris API into 'core' API and multiple 'plugins' is a popular ambition offline, so deserves to be recorded publicly, especially for voting purposes 😉 .

Benefits:

• Smaller package(s)
• Quicker to install - fewer core dependencies
• Can run on Iris on smaller machines e.g. AWS lambda
• Faster testing - plugins (with accompanying dependencies) get their own separate testing routines
• Clearer development philosophy

Examples of elements that could be plugins:

• Plotting
• Regridding
• File loaders/savers

[tkknight]

Having some specific user requirements/scenarios for this would help.

[bjlittle]

Regardless, it begs the fundamental Iris developer question: What is the core functionality of Iris?

[rcomer]

There are various small packages out there that do specific things that are useful for scientists. For example, I am currently having a go with xeofs which currently has interfaces for pandas, xarray and numpy types. If one were to think about adding an Iris interface to such a package, it would be useful (for testing) to have an Iris flavour that knows about the cube class and probably not much else.

[pp-mo]

@HGWright pointed out : The big cost of this, not just the effort of doing it but the ongoing extra repo maintenance (e.g. multiple dependabot hits)