Polars: py-0.19.16 Release

⚠️ Deprecations

• Rename series_equal/frame_equal to equals (#12618)
• Rename map_dict to replace and change default behavior (#12599)

🚀 Performance improvements

• order(s) of magnitude speedup when initialising List dtype Series from 2D numpy array (#12672)
• improve merge_local_rhs_categorical traversal (#12660)
• make values_size estimate correct for sliced arrays (#12658)
• improve parquet utf8 validation (#12655)
• parquet pre-allocate buffer in binary plain encode (#12652)
• optimize dict binary decoding in parquet (#12648)
• ensure we only check the values within bounds (#12633)
• parquet; elide recursion in hot path (#12625)
• improve cov/corr algorithm (#12590)

✨ Enhancements

• Join operations on local categoricals (#12657)
• Implement PySeries.from_buffer for boolean buffers (#12654)
• Implement PySeries.from_buffer for numeric types (#12646)
• use RLE_DICTIONARY for integers in parquet (#12647)
• extend recent filter syntax upgrades to when/then construct (#12603)
• implement RLE_DICT encoding for utf8/binary columns (reduced parquet file size) (#12623)
• implement 'DeltaByteArray' decoding for parquet (#12602)

🐞 Bug fixes

• json null inference (#12677)
• cov/corr respect f32 type (#12676)
• fix ternary zip_with null broadcast (#12668)
• support negative slice on eager frame (#12644)
• fix concurrency budget assertion (#12641)
• fix oob in set operations (#12640)
• panic reading parquet nested struct column (#12614)
• Fix deprecation message for DataFrame.sum (#12619)
• features: performant,lazy,random (#12600)

🛠️ Other improvements

• Use range instead of np.arange in constructors (#12621)
• update custom allocator instructions to include macOS (#12593)

Thank you to all our contributors for making this release possible! @alexander-beedie, @c-peters, @cardoso, @dmitrybugakov, @nameexhaustion, @orlp, @ritchie46 and @stinodego