Pynwb

Bug fixes:
- Added `environment-ros3.yml` to `MANIFEST.in` for inclusion in source distributions. rly (1398)
- Fixed bad error check in ``IntracellularRecordingsTable.add_recording`` when adding ``IZeroClampSeries``.
oruebel (1410)
- Skipped ros3 tests if internet access or the ros3 driver are not available. oruebel (1414)
- Fixed CI issues. rly (1427)

Documentation and tutorial enhancements:
- Enhanced ordering of sphinx gallery tutorials to use alphabetic ordering based on tutorial headings. oruebel (1399)
- Updated the general tutorial to add documentation about the ``Images`` type. bendichter (1353)
- Updated the main index of the documentation to make the documentation easier to navigate. oruebel (1402)
- Merged the "NWB File" overview section with the "NWB File Basics" tutorial. oruebel (1402)
- Updated and created separated installation instructions for users and developers . oruebel (1402)
- Updated the Extracellular electrophysiology tutorial. bendichter, weiglszonja (1391)
- Extended the general tutorial with more data types (e.g., ``Subject``, ``SpatialSeries``, ``Position``).
weiglszonja (1403)
- Improved constructor docstrings for Image types. weiglszonja (1418)
- Added documentation for exporting NWB files. rly (1417)
- Improved documentation formatting. bendichter (1438)
- Minor text fixes. bendichter (1437, 1400)

Minor improvements:
- Improved constructor docstrings for Image types. weiglszonja (1418)
- Added checks for data orientation in ``TimeSeries``, ``ElectricalSeries``, and ``RoiResponseSeries`` bendichter (1428)
- Added checks for data orientation in ``TimeSeries``, ``ElectricalSeries``, and ``RoiResponseSeries``.
bendichter (1426)
- Enhanced issue template forms on GitHub. CodyCBakerPHD (1434)

Breaking changes:
- ``SweepTable`` has been deprecated in favor of the new icephys metadata tables. Use of ``SweepTable``
is still possible but no longer recommended. oruebel (1349)
- ``TimeSeries.__init__`` now requires the ``data`` argument because the 'data' dataset is required by the schema.
If a ``TimeSeries`` is read without a value for ``data``, it will be set to a default value. For most
``TimeSeries``, this is a 1-dimensional empty array with dtype uint8. For ``ImageSeries`` and
``DecompositionSeries``, this is a 3-dimensional empty array with dtype uint8. rly (1274)
- ``TimeSeries.__init__`` now requires the ``unit`` argument because the 'unit' attribute is required by the schema.
If a ``TimeSeries`` is read without a value for ``unit``, it will be set to a default value. For most
``TimeSeries``, this is "unknown". For ``IndexSeries``, this is "N/A" according to the NWB 2.4.0 schema. rly (1274)

New features:
- Added new intracellular electrophysiology hierarchical table structure from ndx-icephys-meta to NWB core.
This includes the new types ``TimeSeriesReferenceVectorData``, ``IntracellularRecordingsTable``,
``SimultaneousRecordingsTable``, ``SequentialRecordingsTable``, ``RepetitionsTable`` and
``ExperimentalConditionsTable`` as well as corresponding updates to ``NWBFile`` to support interaction
with the new tables. oruebel (1349)
- Added support for NWB 2.4.0. See [Release Notes](https://nwb-schema.readthedocs.io/en/latest/format_release_notes.html)
for more details. oruebel, rly (1349)
- Dropped Python 3.6 support, added Python 3.9 support. rly (1377)
- Updated requirements to allow compatibility with HDMF 3 and h5py 3. rly (1377)
- When using HDMF 3 and h5py 3, users can now stream NWB files from an S3 bucket.

Tutorial enhancements:
- Added new tutorial for intracellular electrophysiology to describe the use of the new metadata tables
and declared the previous tutoral using ``SweepTable`` as deprecated. oruebel (1349)
- Added new tutorial for querying intracellular electrophysiology metadata
(``docs/gallery/domain/plot_icephys_pandas.py``). oruebel (1349, 1383)
- Added thumbnails for tutorials to improve presentation of online docs. oruebel (1349)
- Used `sphinx.ext.extlinks` extension in docs to simplify linking to common targets. oruebel (1349)
- Created new section for advanced I/O tutorials and moved parallel I/O tutorial to its own file. oruebel (1349)
- Overhauled documentation on extensions. bendichter, rly, oruebel (1350)
- Updated the optical physiology / Calcium imaging tutorial. bendichter, weiglszonja (1375)
- Added a tutorial on streaming using the ROS3 driver. rly (1393)

Minor new features:
- Added RRID for citing PyNWB to the docs. oruebel (1372)
- Updated CI and tests to handle deprecations in libraries. rly (1377)
- Added test utilities for icephys (``pynwb.testing.icephys_testutils``) to ease creation of test data
for tests and tutorials. oruebel (1349, 1383)
- Added on-push and nightly tests of streaming using the ROS3 driver. rly (1393)
- These tests make use of a new dandiset for testing the API: https://gui.dandiarchive.org/#/dandiset/000126
- Improve documentation and test for ``CorrectedImageStack``, ``MotionCorrection``. rly, bendichter (1306, 1374)

Bug fixes:
- Updated behavior of ``make clean`` command for docs to ensure tutorial files are cleaned up. oruebel (1349)
- Enforced electrode ID uniqueness during insertion into table. CodyCBakerPhD (1344)
- Fixed integration tests with invalid test data that will be caught by future hdmf validator version.
dsleiter, rly (1366, 1376)
- Fixed build warnings in docs. oruebel (1380)
- Fix intersphinx links in docs for numpy. oruebel (1386)
- Previously, the ``data`` argument was required in ``OpticalSeries.__init__`` even though ``external_file`` could
be provided in place of ``data``. ``OpticalSeries.__init__`` now makes ``data`` optional. However, this has the
side effect of moving the position of ``data`` to later in the argument list, which may break code that relies
on positional arguments for ``OpticalSeries.__init__``. rly (1274)
- Fixed `setup.py` not being able to import `versioneer` when installing in an embedded Python environment. ikhramts
(1395)
- Removed broken option to validate against a given namespace file and updated associated documentation. rly (1397)

Bug fixes:
- Raise minimum version of pandas from 0.23 to 1.0.5 to be compatible with numpy 1.20, and raise minimum version of
HDMF to use the corresponding change in HDMF. rly (1363)
- Update documentation and update structure of requirements files. rly (1363)

New features:
- `NWBFile.add_scratch(...)` and `ScratchData.__init__(...)` now accept scalar data in addition to the currently
accepted types. rly (1309)
- Support `pathlib.Path` paths when opening files with `NWBHDF5IO`. dsleiter (1314)
- Use HDMF 2.5.1. See the [HDMF release notes](https://github.com/hdmf-dev/hdmf/releases/tag/2.5.1) for details.
- Support `driver='ros3'` in `NWBHDF5IO` for streaming NWB files directly from s3. bendichter (1331)
- Update documentation, CI GitHub processes. oruebel yarikoptic, bendichter, TomDonoghue, rly
(1311, 1336, 1351, 1352, 1345, 1340, 1327)
- Set default `neurodata_type_inc` for `NWBGroupSpec`, `NWBDatasetSpec`. rly (1295)
- Block usage of h5py 3+ for now. h5py>=2.9, <3 is supported. (1355)
- Fix incompatibility issue with downstream github-release tool used to deploy releases to GitHub. rly (1245)
- Fix issue with Sphinx gallery. rly
- Add citation information to documentation and support for duecredit tool. rly
- Remove use of ColoredTestRunner for more readable verbose test output. rly
- Add support for nwb-schema 2.3.0. rly (1245, 1330)
- Add optional `waveforms` column to the `Units` table.
- Add optional `strain` field to `Subject`.
- Add to `DecompositionSeries` an optional `DynamicTableRegion` called `source_channels`.
- Add to `ImageSeries` an optional link to `Device`.
- Add optional `continuity` field to `TimeSeries`.
- Add optional `filtering` attribute to `ElectricalSeries`.
- Clarify documentation for electrode impedance and filtering.
- Set the `stimulus_description` for `IZeroCurrentClamp` to have the fixed value "N/A".
- See https://nwb-schema.readthedocs.io/en/latest/format_release_notes.html for full schema release notes.
- Add support for HDMF 2.5.5 and upgrade HDMF requirement from 2.1.0 to 2.5.5. rly ajtritt
(1325, 1355, 1360, 1245, 1287). This includes several relevant features and bug fixes, including:
- Fix issue where dependencies of included types were not being loaded in namespaces / extensions.
- Add `HDF5IO.get_namespaces(path=path, file=file)` method which returns a dict of namespace name mapped to the
namespace version (the largest one if there are multiple) for each namespace cached in the given HDF5 file.
- Add methods for automatic creation of `MultiContainerInterface` classes.
- Add ability to specify a custom class for new columns to a `DynamicTable` that are not `VectorData`,
`DynamicTableRegion`, or `VocabData` using `DynamicTable.__columns__` or `DynamicTable.add_column(...)`.
- Add support for creating and specifying multi-index columns in a `DynamicTable` using `add_column(...)`.
- Add capability to add a row to a column after IO.
- Add method `AbstractContainer.get_fields_conf`.
- Add functionality for storing external resource references.
- Add method `hdmf.utils.get_docval_macro` to get a tuple of the current values for a docval_macro, e.g., 'array_data'
and 'scalar_data'.
- `DynamicTable` can be automatically generated using `get_class`. Now the HDMF API can read files with extensions
that contain a DynamicTable without needing to import the extension first.
- Add `EnumData` type for storing data that comes from a fixed set of values.
- Add `AlignedDynamicTable` type which defines a DynamicTable that supports storing a collection of subtables.
- Allow `np.bool_` as a valid `bool` dtype when validating.
- See https://github.com/hdmf-dev/hdmf/releases for full HDMF release notes.

(version < 2).
- Use of HDMF 2.1.0 fixes `__getitem__`-based access of `MultiContainerInterface` types, e.g,,
`fluorescence['roi_response_series_name']`, where previously if the `MultiContainerInterface` contained only one item,
then any key could be used within the square brackets to access the contained `Container`, even if the key did not
match the name of the contained `Container`. This update patches this bug such that the key used within the square
brackets *must* match the name of the contained `Container` or else an error will be raised.

Internal improvements:
- Update requirements to use HDMF 2.1.0. rly (1256)
- Start FAQ section in documentation. rly (1249)
- Improve deprecation warnings. rly (1261)
- Update CI to test Python 3.8, update requirements. rly (1267, 1275)
- Make use of `MultiContainerInterface` and `LabelledDict` that have been moved to HDMF. bendichter rly (1260)

Bug fixes:
- For `ImageSeries`, add check if `external_file` is provided without `starting_frame` in `__init__`. rly (1264)
- Improve docstrings for `TimeSeries.data` and for the electrode table. rly (1271, 1272)
- Fix Azure Pipelines configuration. rly (1281)

Internal improvements:
- Update requirements to use HDMF 1.6.4. rly (1256)

Bug fixes:
- Fix writing optional args to electrodes table. rly (1246)
- Fix missing method UnitsMap.get_nwb_file. rly (1227)