Exposing some core Speasy methods to users

[jeandet]

I'm thinking about exposing some Speasy core methods as user API since they might be handy for users.
We could expose and document as public API the following methods:

• any_loc_open
• list_files
• make_utc_datetime
• epoch_to_datetime64
• load_variable
• Maybe some cache decorators to allow users to cache custom functions

The main drawback to this is that we lose the ability to change the behavior or remove those functions.

[jeandet]

@brenard-irap, @KatraB in case you have any opinion on this.
@jgieseler maybe you could have any use of such functions?

[KatraB]

@brenard-irap, @KatraB in case you have any opinion on this. @jgieseler maybe you could have any use of such functions?

Well, i think it makes sense to expose those functions, many of them (list_files, datetime, ...) are not very risky or subject to change so why not. In the worst case, if some changes were needed, it could be considered to use functions overload to implement changes without breaking anything, no?

[jgieseler]

I'm not sure if it's worth the effort if you're not yourself benefiting from it (like loading them from here somewhere else). The functions are quite specific. I guess most users will write them themselves and/or won't find them from here...

[jeandet]

@jgieseler that's the question, I mostly agree with you on epoch/utc functions but not so sure with the other ones.
At least we have students and physicists in our lab who might use those functions once they are able to find them.