Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

nat.python 0.2.0

First tagged release. A small shared layer of Python interoperability and environment management for the natverse, built on reticulate. fafbseg, bancr and seatabler depend on it for both concerns.

Python environment management

• simple_python() provisions and manages a shared miniconda environment, with curated bundles for the FlyWire/connectomics ecosystem: "basic" (cloud-volume + seatable_api + CAVEclient), "full" (+ navis + fafbseg), "extra" (+ skeletonisation tooling), "minimal" (just pandas, nat.python’s own baseline; numpy rides in with it), and "none" for an env with no bundle.
• check_reticulate() checks a usable Python is available, guiding users to simple_python() when not.

Module management

• check_module() — install/load gate that checks whether a module is present (from distribution metadata, without importing), imports it, and on absence offers to install it or errors with guidance.
• module_available(), module_version() / forget_module_version(), py_module_info() for introspecting the environment.

Data conversion

• pandas2df() converts pandas DataFrames to R, recovering 64-bit id columns as bit64, flattening object/numpy columns and coercing datetimes.
  • Fast-path for pandas nullable Int64/UInt64 extension columns, which reticulate otherwise converts cell-by-cell (~24x faster on large id-heavy frames; output byte-for-byte identical).
  • A bigint argument and unified integer-column classification.
• null2na() helper for None → NA.

64-bit id marshalling

• pyids2bit64(), rids2pyint(), rids2raw() round-trip large integer identifiers between R (bit64), numpy and raw bytes without precision loss; int64_overflows() flags values that would overflow.

Datetime

• ts2pydatetime() converts R timestamps to Python datetimes.