:rocket: Major Features and improvements

• Dropped Python 3.7 support.
• Introduced project tools and example to the kedro new CLI flow.
• The new spaceflights starters, spaceflights-pandas, spaceflights-pandas-viz, spaceflights-pyspark, and spaceflights-pyspark-viz can be used with the kedro new command with the --starter flag.
• Added the --conf-source option to %reload_kedro, allowing users to specify a source for project configuration.
• Added the functionality to choose a merging strategy for config files loaded with OmegaConfigLoader.
• Modified the mechanism of importing datasets, raise more explicit error when dependencies are missing.
• Added validation for configuration file used to override run commands via the CLI.
• Moved the default environment base and local from config loader to _ProjectSettings. This enables the use of config loader as a standalone class without affecting existing Kedro Framework users.

:beetle: Bug fixes and other changes

• Added a new field tools to pyproject.toml when a project is created.
• Reduced spaceflights data to minimise waiting times during tutorial execution.
• Added validation to node tags to be consistent with node names.
• Removed pip-tools as a dependency.
• Accepted path-like filepaths more broadly for datasets.

:boom: Breaking changes

• Removed ConfigLoader and TemplatedConfigLoader.
• Removed kedro.extras.datasets and tests (use kedro-datasets instead)
• Removed PartitionedDataset and IncrementalDataset from kedro.io (import them from kedro-datasets instead)
• logging is removed from OmegaConfigLoader in favour of the environment variable KEDRO_LOGGING_CONFIG.
• Removed support for defining the layer attribute at top-level within DataCatalog.
• Renamed data_set and DataSet to dataset and Dataset everywhere.
• Removed the create_default_data_set() method in the Runner in favour of using dataset factories to create default dataset instances.
• The default project template now has only one pyproject.toml at the root of the project (containing both the packaging metadata and the Kedro build config).

:writing_hand: Documentation changes

• Added new top navigation to easily switch between Framework, Viz, and Datasets.
• Added new search-as-you-type to improve the search experience.

New Contributors

• @MinuraPunchihewa made their first contribution in https://github.com/kedro-org/kedro/pull/3115
• @mustious made their first contribution in https://github.com/kedro-org/kedro/pull/3181
• @JayOaks made their first contribution in https://github.com/kedro-org/kedro/pull/3239
• @adamkells made their first contribution in https://github.com/kedro-org/kedro/pull/3203
• @HKABIG made their first contribution in https://github.com/kedro-org/kedro/pull/3270
• @pdave34 made their first contribution in https://github.com/kedro-org/kedro/pull/3213
• @hermlon made their first contribution in https://github.com/kedro-org/kedro/pull/3303

Full Changelog: https://github.com/kedro-org/kedro/compare/0.18.14...0.19.0

:rotating_light: If you are upgrading from Kedro 0.18, have a look at the migration guide.

We welcome every community contribution, large or small. See what we're working on now and report bugs or suggest future features. Until next time, The Kedro Team :yellow_heart: