full minutes

Author: SethTisue

minutes/_posts/2025-02-05-february-5-2025.md

@@ -12,15 +12,24 @@ Scala Center website.
 The following agenda was distributed to attendees:
 [agenda](https://github.com/scalacenter/advisoryboard/blob/main/agendas/034-2024-q4.md).
 
-Center activities for the past quarter focused on TODO
+Center activities for the past quarter focused on Scala 3 maintenance,
+the Scala 3 language specification, Scala.js maintenance, the Scala
+Improvement Process, sbt 2, the new Scala Highlights newsletter,
+Google of Summer Code, Scala Advent of Code, compiler sprees, Scala
+Days, and fundraising.
 
 Details are below and in the Center's activity report:
 
 * [report](https://scala.epfl.ch/records/2024-Q4-activity-report.html)
 
-No new proposals were received this quarter.
+One new proposal was received this quarter:
 
-Other topics covered included TODO
+* [SCP-034](https://github.com/scalacenter/advisoryboard/blob/main/proposals/034-artifact-publishing.md): Artifact publishing
+
+After discussion, the board decided to postpone any formal vote on it.
+
+Other topics covered included officer elections; officers remained
+unchanged.
 
 ## Date, Time and Location
 
@@ -37,7 +46,7 @@ meeting so Seth filled in.
 
 Officers:
 
-* Chris Kipp (chairperson)
+* Chris Kipp (chairperson), community
 * Darja Jovanovic (executive director), EPFL
 * Sébastien Doeraene (interim technical director), EPFL
 * Martin Odersky (technical advisor), EPFL
@@ -55,10 +64,6 @@ Apologies:
 
 * Daniela Sfregola, Morgan Stanley
 
-## Introduction
-
-TODO
-
 ## Technical report
 
 Seb, as interim technical director, summarized Scala Center activities
@@ -74,11 +79,27 @@ And the Center's 2025 Q1 roadmap:
 The following notes do not repeat the contents of the report and
 roadmap, but only supplement them.
 
-TODO
+Seb noted that at its current staffing level the Center is currently
+doing at least as much organizing and community work as technical
+work.
 
-## Management and financial report
+Darja noted that now that Scala Highlights exists, the Center will put
+more effort into that and, to compensate, somewhat less effort into
+detailed quarterly reports and meeting minutes.
+
+A board member asked where Scala.js's WebAssembly back end stands.
+Seb said that optimizing the back end is still pending. Closures in
+particular are not optimized yet. Martin added that stable exceptions
+support in WebAssembly in browsers is another pending issue preventing
+the Center's work on this from being quite ready yet for use in common
+scenarios.
 
-TODO
+There was some technical discussion about how the Scala 3 debugger
+would be packaged to be consumed by IntelliJ and other tools. Also,
+an officer asked about the debugger code moving into the main Scala 3
+repo; does that mean that fixes require a new language release? Seb
+said yes, but that code is now stable enough now for it to be worth
+it.
 
 ## Scala 2 report
 
@@ -89,7 +110,7 @@ Let us know what you think, as this will be the template for future
 issues, which will be published quarterly.
 
 Since the last meeting, we published a blog post about our Scala 2
-maintenance plans.  2.Note that 2.12 is now under minimal maintenance.
+maintenance plans. Note that 2.12 is now under minimal maintenance.
 
 Scala 2.13.15 and 2.13.16 came out since the last meeting.  Changes
 were modest and focused on compatibility, on supporting Scala 3
@@ -108,29 +129,104 @@ We plan for
 (resuming making additions to the standard library) to be a theme
 for 2.13.17.
 
-Chris asked: if the primary motivation for maintaining 2.12 is sbt 1,
+An officer asked: if the primary motivation for maintaining 2.12 is sbt 1,
 does that mean that when sbt 2 comes out, 2.12 be EOLed?  Seth
 responded: perhaps eventually, but not right away. We are assuming a
 longer timeframe since sbt 1 will remain in wide use for some time yet
 to come, even once sbt 2 is available.
 
+## SCP-034: Artifact publishing
+
+Eugene summarized [the
+proposal](https://github.com/scalacenter/advisoryboard/blob/main/proposals/034-artifact-publishing.md).
+
+Seb expressed support; "it seems like a sensible thing to do". One
+board member wondered if maintainers would be sufficiently motivated
+to migrate to a shared implementation. Another member asked if there's
+a particular current implementation that would be the basis of the
+shared one; there was no simple, single answer.
+
+The rest of the discussion centered on whether the Center would have
+enough engineering resources this year to lead this. In the end, the
+board decided not to formally vote on it now, but revisit the proposal
+later. Chris suggested that Eugene amend the proposal to reflect
+today's discussion.
+
 ## Elections
 
-For chairperson, Chris Kipp put his name forward to continue as chair
-and was elected unanimously. (Chairs are not expected to serve for
-longer than one year, but a willing chair is also welcome to serve for
-longer.)
+For chairperson, Chris Kipp indicated his willingness to continue as
+chair and was elected unanimously. (Chairs are not required to serve
+past one year, but a willing chair is welcome to serve for longer.)
 
 Also re-elected without any other nominations being made were Martin
 Odersky (technical advisor) and Seth Tisue (secretary).
 
 ## Community report
 
-This section was led by Eugene and Zainab.
+This section was led by Zainab and Eugene.
+
+Zainab said the London community is currently strong, with more events
+occurring, with attendance up as well. The London Scala group is now
+doing open-source hack days and women-in-Scala meetings, in addition
+to the usual meetups with speakers. ScalaBridge has received feedback
+that it could devote more time to setup and tooling, as that usually
+causes participants more trouble than the language itself.
+
+Eugene noted that X (aka Twitter) is no longer as universal a source
+of news and discussion; some users remain but others have dispersed to
+Bluesky and/or Mastodon. He said that as a result, the Scala Reddit is
+even more important to the community than before, and the discussions
+and engagement there have been strong recently (including topics about
+education and training).
+
+He also observed that there have been several extremely active
+language design discussions recently, such as the one about collection
+literals.  There was some discussion among the board about how these
+proposals and discussions can best be framed and structured, to
+encourage high quality engagement and ensure that people feel heard.
+
+There was some also some discussion on how to better coordinate
+language changes with tooling maintainers, including the recent
+introduction of the concept of "preview" features as an intermediate
+state between "experimental" and completed.
+
+One board member expressed a wish for Scala people (perhaps even
+Center members) to more present at non-Scala conferences, representing
+Scala outside of our own community.
+
+There was some discussion around how having a smaller engineering
+staff may change community perception of the Center. There was general
+agreement that our publicity should focus on what advances are
+happening and not too much on exactly where they happened (except, of
+course, to give credit where credit is due!). That's part of the idea
+behind the new Scala Highlights newsletter, which is assembled by the
+Center, but isn't restricted to presenting the Center's own
+activities; it's about everything happening under the Scala umbrella.
+
+## Management and financial report
+
+Darja said that a major piece of news since the last meeting was the
+publication in October of the new Scala governance and "development
+guarantees" documents, as described in [this blog
+post](https://www.scala-lang.org/news/new-governance.html).
+
+Also very important, the publication of the first issue of [Scala
+Highlights](https://www.scala-lang.org/highlights/2025/02/06/highlights-2024.html).
+The first issue covers all of 2024; future issues will have quarterly
+news.
+
+The Center's finances have improved thanks to one-time donations and
+assistance from several sources. Regardless, hiring additional staff
+would require additional funding. Fundraising efforts are ongoing.
+
+As also discussed at the meeting last September, the Center is in
+the process of planning its own long-term future, outside of EPFL,
+once it's no longer possible to remain part of the university.
 
-TODO
+The Center is also still in the process of reviving Scala Days for
+later in 2025.
 
 ## Conclusion
 
-The next meeting will be held online, probably in late April or early
-May. If possible, the fall meeting will be held in-person at EPFL.
+The next meeting will be held online, probably in April. If possible,
+a late-summer or fall meeting will be held in-person at EPFL.