Separating Iris API into 'core' API and multiple 'plugins' is a popular ambition offline, so deserves to be recorded publicly, especially for voting purposes 😉 .

Benefits:

• Smaller package(s)
• Quicker to install - fewer core dependencies
• Can run on Iris on smaller machines e.g. AWS lambda
• Faster testing - plugins (with accompanying dependencies) get their own separate testing routines
• Clearer development philosophy

Examples of elements that could be plugins:

• Plotting
• Regridding
• File loaders/savers