For release 2025.01.00

[fmalatino]

Description
This PR will bring the changes from develop into the main branch for release 2025.01.00

Checklist:

• My code follows the style guidelines of this project
• I have performed a self-review of my own code
• I have commented my code, particularly in hard-to-understand areas
• I have made corresponding changes to the documentation
• My changes generate no new warnings
• Any dependent changes have been merged and published in downstream modules
• New check tests, if applicable, are included

[FlorianDeconinck]

LGTM

The commit list here and yesterday on the develop branch, makes me think we ought to make squash-merge the default for merging into develop and main. That way, in lieu of every commit of every branch, we would have only PR consolidated commits, easier for review of what we are moving in. And we could focus our effort on making sure the messages of those commits are readable and verbose enough.

[FlorianDeconinck]

LGTM

The commit list here and yesterday on the develop branch, makes me think we ought to make squash-merge the default for merging into develop and main. That way, in lieu of every commit of every branch, we would have only PR consolidated commits, easier for review of what we are moving in. And we could focus our effort on making sure the messages of those commits are readable and verbose enough.

For example - for this release there's 108 commits being merged in release, but only a little more than a dozen PR. I'd rather have a neat list of ~12 PR name + description

[bensonr]

I agree with @FlorianDeconinck on the use of squash commits keeping only the relevant info from the actual merge/PR

[oelbert]

Agreed with @FlorianDeconinck as well about squash merging

[fmalatino]

@FlorianDeconinck and @bensonr, I have now made squash merge the default method moving forward