speed up parquet download of streaming engine (#12544)
speed up cov/corr with SIMD + strength-reduction ~3x 0.19.13/ ~2x numpy (#12471)
apply predicates and statistics of parquet files in streaming mode (#12439)
use online algorithm for cov/corr ~2x (#12412)
make 1D numpy to polars conversion zero-copy for numeric data (#12403)

✨ Enhancements

Add dedicated horizontal aggregation methods to DataFrame (#12492)
support http scan_parquet (#12517)
Add support for UTF-8 BOM option in write_csv and sink_csv (#12253)
remove lexical (replace with atoi_simd, ryu, and itao). (#12512)
more changes for versioned plugins (#12504)
plugins add version and context (#12433)
Add DataType.is_integer and other dtype groups (#12200)
include i128 in more primitive functions (#12413)
write rolling functions as private expressions. (#12379)

🐞 Bug fixes

fix incorrect ternary agg states (#12538)
fix and improve ternary evaluation on groups (#12529)
saturating sub in debug msg (#12525)
fix panic when writing Decimal type to parquet (#12532)
pre-fefetch struct columns in async projection pd (#12514)
rechunk cross join output in streaming (#12511)
Ensure behaviour ofSeries comparison with timedelta matches that of other types (#12497)
fix as_list logical types (#12507)
fix streaming cross join on empty df (#12491)
dont overflow when calculating date range over very long periods (#12479)
Allow append/zip_with/extend on local categoricals (#12369)
Do not panic if time is invalid (#12466)
ensure explicit "return_dtype" is respected by map_dicts (#12436)
empty csv no-raise (#12434)
Fix scan_csv error type (#12355)
binary operations in aggregation context on literals (#12430)
raw HTML output alignment was incorrect for dtype in header (#12422)
update groups state after binary aggregation (#12415)
Remove extra \n when reading file-like object wi… (#12333)
Issue correct PolarsInefficientMapWarning for lshift/rshift operations (#12385)
revert ternary special broadcast, ensure broadcast is always to max height (#12395)
ensure first/last return null if empty (#12401)

🛠️ Other improvements

fix and improve ternary evaluation on groups (#12529)
Add polars-ds to list of community plugins (#12527)
Future-proof consortium standard test (#12524)
add schema test (#12523)
remove lexical (replace with atoi_simd, ryu, and itao). (#12512)
add test for previous commit (#12510)
Update polars-hash reference (#12505)
Add note on hash stability and mention polars-hash (#12496)
Support Python 3.12 (#12094)
Improved import polars timing test; now much more consistent/reliable (#12478)
Use .with_columns() in all .list namespace examples (#12475)
update rustc (#12468)
Fix docs trigger (#12449)
Update for new maturin release (#12437)
Remove 'experimental' tag for auto-structify setting (#12435)
make "DataFrame" and "Series" case more consistent across docs/comments/errors (#12428)
dprint/markdown link checker minor updates (#12409)
Use manylinux_2_17 for building x86-64 wheel (#12408)
Use manylinux 2.24 instead of 2.28 for compatibility reasons (#12397)
use with_columns in is_in example, and fix some bullet points not rendering (#12383)

Thank you to all our contributors for making this release possible! @MarcoGorelli, @abstractqqq, @alexander-beedie, @c-peters, @cmdlineluser, @hirohira9119, @ion-elgreco, @jerome3o, @nameexhaustion, @reswqa, @ritchie46, @stinodego and @uchiiii