Hi all, I'm happy to announce pandas 0.19.0 has been released. This is a major release from 0.18.1 and includes a number of API changes, several new features, enhancements, and performance improvements along with a large number of bug fixes. See the Whatsnew <http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.19.0/whatsnew.html> file for more information. We recommend that all users upgrade to this version. This is the work of 5 months of development by 117 contributors. A big thank you to all contributors! Joris --- *What is it:* pandas is a Python package providing fast, flexible, and expressive data structures designed to make working with “relational” or “labeled” data both easy and intuitive. It aims to be the fundamental high-level building block for doing practical, real world data analysis in Python. Additionally, it has the broader goal of becoming the most powerful and flexible open source data analysis / manipulation tool available in any language. *Highlights of the 0.19.0 release include:* - New method merge_asof for asof-style time-series joining, see here <http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.19.0/whatsnew.html#whatsnew-0...> - The .rolling() method is now time-series aware, see here <http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.19.0/whatsnew.html#whatsnew-0...> - read_csv now supports parsing Categorical data, see here <http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.19.0/whatsnew.html#whatsnew-0...> - A function union_categorical has been added for combining categoricals, see here <http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.19.0/whatsnew.html#whatsnew-0...> - PeriodIndex now has its own period dtype, and changed to be more consistent with other Index classes. See here <http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.19.0/whatsnew.html#whatsnew-0...> - Sparse data structures gained enhanced support of int and bool dtypes, see here <http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.19.0/whatsnew.html#whatsnew-0...> - Comparison operations with Series no longer ignores the index, see here <http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.19.0/whatsnew.html#whatsnew-0...> for an overview of the API changes. - Introduction of a pandas development API for utility functions, see here <http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.19.0/whatsnew.html#whatsnew-0...> . - Deprecation of Panel4D and PanelND. We recommend to represent these types of n-dimensional data with the xarray package <http://xarray.pydata.org/en/stable/>. - Removal of the previously deprecated modules pandas.io.data, pandas.io.wb, pandas.tools.rplot. See the Whatsnew <http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.19.0/whatsnew.html> file for more information. *How to get it:* Source tarballs and windows/mac/linux wheels are available on PyPI (thanks to Christoph Gohlke for the windows wheels, and to Matthew Brett for setting up the mac/linux wheels). Conda packages are already available via the conda-forge channel (conda install pandas -c conda-forge). It will be available on the main channel shortly. *Issues:* Please report any issues on our issue tracker: https://github.com/pydata/pandas/issues *Thanks to all the contributors:* - adneu - Adrien Emery - agraboso - Alex Alekseyev - Alex Vig - Allen Riddell - Amol - Amol Agrawal - Andy R. Terrel - Anthonios Partheniou - babakkeyvani - Ben Kandel - Bob Baxley - Brett Rosen - c123w - Camilo Cota - Chris - chris-b1 - Chris Grinolds - Christian Hudon - Christopher C. Aycock - Chris Warth - cmazzullo - conquistador1492 - cr3 - Daniel Siladji - Douglas McNeil - Drewrey Lupton - dsm054 - Eduardo Blancas Reyes - Elliot Marsden - Evan Wright - Felix Marczinowski - Francis T. O’Donovan - Gábor Lipták - Geraint Duck - gfyoung - Giacomo Ferroni - Grant Roch - Haleemur Ali - harshul1610 - Hassan Shamim - iamsimha - Iulius Curt - Ivan Nazarov - jackieleng - Jeff Reback - Jeffrey Gerard - Jenn Olsen - Jim Crist - Joe Jevnik - John Evans - John Freeman - John Liekezer - Johnny Gill - John W. O’Brien - John Zwinck - Jordan Erenrich - Joris Van den Bossche - Josh Howes - Jozef Brandys - Kamil Sindi - Ka Wo Chen - Kerby Shedden - Kernc - Kevin Sheppard - Matthieu Brucher - Maximilian Roos - Michael Scherer - Mike Graham - Mortada Mehyar - mpuels - Muhammad Haseeb Tariq - Nate George - Neil Parley - Nicolas Bonnotte - OXPHOS - Pan Deng / Zora - Paul - Pauli Virtanen - Paul Mestemaker - Pawel Kordek - Pietro Battiston - pijucha - Piotr Jucha - priyankjain - Ravi Kumar Nimmi - Robert Gieseke - Robert Kern - Roger Thomas - Roy Keyes - Russell Smith - Sahil Dua - Sanjiv Lobo - Sašo Stanovnik - Shawn Heide - sinhrks - Sinhrks - Stephen Kappel - Steve Choi - Stewart Henderson - Sudarshan Konge - Thomas A Caswell - Tom Augspurger - Tom Bird - Uwe Hoffmann - wcwagner - WillAyd - Xiang Zhang - Yadunandan - Yaroslav Halchenko - YG-Riku - Yuichiro Kaneko - yui-knk - zhangjinjie - znmean - 颜发才（Yan Facai）