v1.8.4 hotfix release

[jlstevens]

This PR squashes the cherry picked commits on the release_1.8.4 branch (a temporary branch that will be deleted) in order to make a 1.8.4 hotfix release.

[jlstevens]

As this PR represents a new workflow for making hotfix release, I think it is worth summarizing the process:

1. Each hotfix release branches should be branched off the previous one (e.g 1.8.4 is branched off 1.8.3)
2. The bug fixes are cherry picked onto a temporary hotfix branch (e.g release_1.8.4)
3. Once we are happy with that, we can make a single diff between the head of that branch and the previous hotfix release tag to get a single diff file. In this case I used git diff v1.8.3.
4. That diff can be applied on a second branch, also off the previous hotfix. In this case this is the hotfix_1.8.4 branch used in this PR. The goal is to have a single commit with all the bug fixes with an annotated tag (here v1.8.4).
5. The release can be made off that commit, then this PR can be merged into master with an appropriate merge commit (NOTE: DO NOT SQUASH MERGE!) and the temporary branch can be deleted.

[jlstevens]

Tests are passing. Merging.

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