Release 2022.01.1

[jrbourbeau]

If there aren't any known blockers, I'd like to release dask and distributed 2022.01.1 on Friday. In particular, this dask release will contain several updates that add pandas=1.4.0 support for dask.dataframe. The only outstanding work related to this effort are:

• Cleaning up misc tests for pandas compat dask#8623 (part of pandas=1.4.0 support)
• Update tz for pandas 1.4.0 dask#8626 (part of pandas=1.4.0 support)

Also, there was a possible regression (from a yet-to-be-released commit) reported in dask/dask#8625 that we should determine if is an actual regression or not.

Additionally, @crusaderky mentioned that dask/distributed#5381 is getting close to being merged, but that we should wait until after this release before including that change.

cc @jakirkham @quasiben @jsignell @fjetter

EDIT: We should also make sure

• Defer pandas import on worker in P2P shuffle distributed#5695

is included in the distributed release

EDIT EDIT: Guido pointed out dask/distributed#5695 actually isn't introducing any regressions, so we'll handle that PR and dask/distributed#5729 (related issue) in the next release

[jsignell]

RE dask/dask#8625 I don't think it's a real regression, but I still think a deprecation cycle is good for passing meta as a single value and expecting a series.

• Downgrade meta error in #8563 to warning dask#8628

[jrbourbeau]

Starting on the release now...

[jrbourbeau]

Thanks all!