ENH: ma.asarray() and ma.asanyarray() will pass through input of the correct type.

If x is of type MaskedArray for ma.asarray(x) or any subtype of
MaskedArray for ma.asanyarray(x), these functions will simply return x.
This makes them consistent with their numpy counterparts.

Closes gh-4043.
BUG: Fixed mask_rowcols().

Previous implementation relied on ma.asarray() to always create
a new object.

See gh-4043.
BUG: Error checks for the dtype shape.

Also creates a clean tuple for the shape tuple, instead of
passing potentially mutable objects through.

Closes gh-4009
BUG: properly handle references of objects in new np.where

Objects must go over the objects copyswap function and GIL must be taken
before dereferences for correct reference counting.
BUG: min_scalar_type_num: special float values can be represented in half

E.g. pandas sometime uses float('NaN') which would otherwise convert to
float64 where not required. The new np.where which uses
PyArray_ResultType is a case where the conversion is unnecessary.
DOC: document special float scalar casting change in release notes
BLD: Fix ANSI C syntax error

Fixes msvc9/10 error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before 'type'
TST: fail on declaration-after-statement in travis test

required for windows compilers
TST: test non integer item does not return array

from gh-4223 in the 1.8 branch
Merge pull request #4215 from juliantaylor/where-obj-fix

BUG: fix reference count, thread safety and dtypes of np.where
TST: test count_nonzero on unaligned memory
Merge pull request #4232 from juliantaylor/check-win-compile

TST: fail on declaration-after-statement in travis test
MAINT: update scipy-sphinx-theme

Adds copybutton that toggles ">>>" in code samples.
Merge pull request #4233 from pv/copybutton

MAINT: update scipy-sphinx-theme
BLD: include f2py docs in source distribution

update was forgotten in the move to the doc/folder
BLD: exclude compiled python files in source distribution

they could accidentally appear in the source distribution if sdist was
run after a make -C doc.
Merge pull request #4237 from juliantaylor/sdist-updates

Sdist updates
BUG: Removed the inconsistencies of the function ma.count
The inconsistency of ma.count when appled on masked_array with mask as
'nomask' has been removed. the return type of the function has also been
standardized according to the docs.Corresponding changes in testing to
check the functioning of ma.count
Closes gh-3368 and gh-4228
Merge pull request #4234 from jennystone/Branch1

BUG: removed inconsistencies of count (Issues #3368 and #4228)
DOC: fix error in reduceat documentation

reduceat does not allow out-of-bounds indices currently