What is your issue?
Follow on from #6891 and #6978 to discuss how we could homogenize the passing of keyword arguments to wrapped external functions across xarray methods.
There are quite a few methods like this where we are ultimately passing data to numpy, scipy, or some other library and want the option to send variable length kwargs to that underlying function. There are two different ways of doing this today:
- xarray method accepts flexible
**kwargs so these can be written directly in the xarray call
- xarray method accepts a single dict
kwargs (sometimes named differently) and passes these along in expanded form via **kwargs
I could only find a few examples of the latter:
Dataset.interp, which takes kwargs
Dataset.curvefit, which takes kwargs (although the docstring is wrong here)
xr.apply_ufunc, which takes kwargs passed to func and dask_gufunc_kwargs passed to dask.array.apply_gufunc
xr.open_dataset, which takes either **kwargs or backend_kwargs and merges the two
Allowing direct passage with **kwargs seems nice from a user perspective. But, this could occasionally be problematic, for example in the Dataset.interp case where this method also accepts the kwarg form of coords with **coords_kwargs. There are many methods like this that use **indexers_kwargs or **chunks_kwargs with either_dict_or_kwargs but don't happen to wrap external functions.
What is your issue?
Follow on from #6891 and #6978 to discuss how we could homogenize the passing of keyword arguments to wrapped external functions across xarray methods.
There are quite a few methods like this where we are ultimately passing data to numpy, scipy, or some other library and want the option to send variable length kwargs to that underlying function. There are two different ways of doing this today:
**kwargsso these can be written directly in the xarray callkwargs(sometimes named differently) and passes these along in expanded form via**kwargsI could only find a few examples of the latter:
Dataset.interp, which takeskwargsDataset.curvefit, which takeskwargs(although the docstring is wrong here)xr.apply_ufunc, which takeskwargspassed tofuncanddask_gufunc_kwargspassed todask.array.apply_gufuncxr.open_dataset, which takes either**kwargsorbackend_kwargsand merges the twoAllowing direct passage with
**kwargsseems nice from a user perspective. But, this could occasionally be problematic, for example in theDataset.interpcase where this method also accepts the kwarg form ofcoordswith**coords_kwargs. There are many methods like this that use**indexers_kwargsor**chunks_kwargswitheither_dict_or_kwargsbut don't happen to wrap external functions.