Awkward

chrisburr made the build respect `CMAKE_ARGS` if it's set by the environment: PR 1091.

jpivarski fixed `mask_identity=False`, so that it never returns an option type: PR 1108. Also fixed parameters, which truncated floats to ints in its string representation: PR 1114.

agoose77 added a check to `from_json` to not attempt to find very large strings as filenames: PR 1085.

**The v2 project:**

ianna added sorting: PR 1072, reducers: PR 1099, argsort: PR 1092.

stormiestsin added `validityerror`: PR 1101.

jpivarski added a TypeTracer: PRs 1109, 1110.

This is the same as [1.5.0rc2](https://github.com/scikit-hep/awkward-1.0/releases/tag/1.5.0rc2); most of the changes went into [1.5.0rc1](https://github.com/scikit-hep/awkward-1.0/releases/tag/1.5.0rc1).

Reverting the spelling of `ak.nplike.NumPy` → `ak.nplike.Numpy`, etc. (including `CuPy` → `Cupy`) to avoid needlessly breaking interfaces.

matthewfeickert unrestricted the jaxlib version bounds, thanks to a fix that he prompted in JAX: PR 988.

agoose77 added support for n-dimensional NumpyArrays in `ak.where`: PR 980. Added `axis` parameter to `ak.fill_none`: PR 917. Added `np.ravel`: PR 985. Fixed `ak.from_buffers` to support empty buffers: PR 1009. Fixed `ak.packed` for RegularArrays with `size=0`: PR 1008. Fixed `ak.zip` to not convert regular to jagged: 1013. Clarified the documentation of left and right broadcasting: PR 1016. Fixed `ak.broadcast_arrays` by setting `numpy_to_regular=True`: PR 1019. Added support for `ak.Record` in `ak.packed`: PR 1021. Fixed 1026, jagged slicing of a multidimensional NumpyArray: PR 1029. Added a `name` parameter to `ak.mixin_class`: PR 1030.

henryiii touched up CONTRIBUTING.md: PR 1004. Added a spell-checker in pre-commit that fixed a lot of spelling mistakes in comments and documentation: PR 1003.

bfis fixed the stack level of the deprecation warning: PR 1058.

bmwiedemann made the source code reproducible by allowing the build date to be overridden by `SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH`: PR 1050.

nsmith- optimized common array slice ("take") operations: PR 1062.

SantamRC added a better set of kernel unit tests to continuous integration, which will be important for testing GPU kernels: PRs 1065 and 1081.

jpivarski added a default for NEP-18, so now any NumPy function can be used with Awkward Arrays, as long as the Awkward Array can be cast as NumPy (i.e. is rectilinear): PR 1005. Reverted the ill-conceived 694, SliceVarNewAxis: PR 1028. Made `ak.Record` iterable (iterates over _field names_, like dict): PR 1061.

Also, fixed the UnionForm bug described in 770 and 930: PR 991. Fixed 546, `ak.fill_none` losing the replacement's dtype: PR 995. Fixed two bugs in 992: double-masking of reducers and unmasking of `ak.ptp`: PR 994. Fixed `ak.Array.__dir__` to include methods/properties of overridden classees: PR 993. Fixed 982 by accounting for another kind of "gap" in nonlocal reducers: PR 997. Fixed 998 and 1000, `ak.argmax` for ListOffsetArray with nonzero start: PR 1001. Fixed `ak.fill_none` fill value's handling of NumPy dimension: PR 1056. Fixed `ak.to_numpy` for structured arrays that are also masked arrays: PR 1067.

**Continued work on Awkward version 2.x** (in the hidden `ak._v2` submodule). The following PRs are quick to list, but represent large code additions.

ioanaif finished `__getitem__` for all array types: PRs 959, 1031, 1036, and 1073.

ianna refactored ArrayBuilder to not depend on C++ that will be removed in v2: PRs 977, 1045, and 1063.

stormiestsin implemented `_localindex` in v2: PR 1059. And `combinations`: PR 1074.

jpivarski renamed `_getitem_array` as `_carry` and made it take an Index: PR 1025. Added VirtualArray: PR 1079.

Identical to 1.4.0rc6.

agoose77 fixed `ak.mask` for multidimensional NumpyArrays (PR 976).

I think this is the last one before the real release.