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

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---
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layout: contact
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---
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# Minutes of the 34th meeting of the Scala Center, Q4 2024
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Minutes are [archived](https://scala.epfl.ch/records.html) on the
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Scala Center website.
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## Summary
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The following agenda was distributed to attendees:
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[agenda](https://github.com/scalacenter/advisoryboard/blob/main/agendas/034-2024-q4.md).
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Center activities for the past quarter focused on Scala 3 maintenance,
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the Scala 3 language specification, Scala.js maintenance, the Scala
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Improvement Process, sbt 2, the new Scala Highlights newsletter,
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Google of Summer Code, Scala Advent of Code, compiler sprees, Scala
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Days, and fundraising.
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Details are below and in the Center's activity report:
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* [report](https://scala.epfl.ch/records/2024-Q4-activity-report.html)
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One new proposal was received this quarter:
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* [SCP-034](https://github.com/scalacenter/advisoryboard/blob/main/proposals/034-artifact-publishing.md): Artifact publishing
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After discussion, the board decided to postpone any formal vote on it.
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Other topics covered included officer elections; officers remained
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unchanged.
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## Date, Time and Location
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The meeting took place virtually on Wednesday, February 5, 2025 at
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16:15 (UTC).
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Minutes were taken by Seth Tisue (secretary).
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## Attendees
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The company formerly known as Lightbend is now called Akka. Lukas
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Rytz is still the Akka representative, but he was unavailable for this
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meeting so Seth filled in.
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Officers:
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* Chris Kipp (chairperson), community
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* Darja Jovanovic (executive director), EPFL
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* Sébastien Doeraene (interim technical director), EPFL
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* Martin Odersky (technical advisor), EPFL
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* Seth Tisue (secretary), Akka
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Board members:
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* Zainab Ali, community representative
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* Krzysztof Romanowski, VirtusLab (substituting for Krzysztof Borowski)
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* Dmitrii Naumenko, JetBrains
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* Seth Tisue, Akka (substituting for Lukas Rytz)
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* Eugene Yokota, community representative
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Apologies:
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* Daniela Sfregola, Morgan Stanley
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## Technical report
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Séb, as interim technical director, summarized Scala Center activities
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since the last meeting. His remarks were based on the Center's more
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detailed Q4 quarterly activity report:
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* [report](https://scala.epfl.ch/records/2024-Q4-activity-report.html)
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And the Center's 2025 Q1 roadmap:
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* [roadmap](https://scala.epfl.ch/records/2025-Q1-roadmap.html)
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The following notes do not repeat the contents of the report and
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roadmap, but only supplement them.
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Séb noted that at its current staffing level the Center is currently
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doing at least as much organizing and community work as technical
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work.
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A board member asked where Scala.js's WebAssembly back end stands.
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Séb said that optimizing the back end is still pending. Closures in
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particular are not optimized yet. Martin added that stable exceptions
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support in WebAssembly in browsers is another pending issue preventing
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the Center's work on this from being quite ready yet for use in common
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scenarios.
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There was some technical discussion about how the Scala 3 debugger
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would be packaged to be consumed by IntelliJ and other tools. Also,
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an officer asked about the debugger code moving into the main Scala 3
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repo; does that mean that fixes require a new language release? Séb
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said yes, but that code is now stable enough now for it to be worth
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it.
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## Scala 2 report
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This was presented by Seth.
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Scala Newsletter is out today, and covers both Scala 3 and Scala 2.
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Let us know what you think, as this will be the template for future
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issues, which will be published quarterly.
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Since the last meeting, we published a blog post about our Scala 2
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maintenance plans. Note that 2.12 is now under minimal maintenance.
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Scala 2.13.15 and 2.13.16 came out since the last meeting. Changes
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were modest and focused on compatibility, on supporting Scala 3
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migration, and on improvements to warnings and linting. There have
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been no 2.13.16 regression reports, so if anyone was holding back on
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upgrading, I'd say go ahead.
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As usual, we've opened threads on the Contributors forum for
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discussing plans for the next releases:
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* 2.13.17: https://contributors.scala-lang.org/t/scala-2-13-17-release-planning/6994
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* 2.12.21: https://contributors.scala-lang.org/t/scala-2-12-21-release-planning/6753
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We plan for
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[SIP-51](https://docs.scala-lang.org/sips/drop-stdlib-forwards-bin-compat.html)
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(resuming making additions to the standard library) to be a theme
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for 2.13.17.
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An officer asked: if the primary motivation for maintaining 2.12 is sbt 1,
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does that mean that when sbt 2 comes out, 2.12 be EOLed? Seth
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responded: perhaps eventually, but not right away. We are assuming a
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longer timeframe since sbt 1 will remain in wide use for some time yet
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to come, even once sbt 2 is available.
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## SCP-034: Artifact publishing
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Eugene summarized [the
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proposal](https://github.com/scalacenter/advisoryboard/blob/main/proposals/034-artifact-publishing.md).
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Séb expressed support; "it seems like a sensible thing to do". One
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board member wondered if maintainers would be sufficiently motivated
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to migrate to a shared implementation. Another member asked if there's
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a particular current implementation that would be the basis of the
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shared one; there was no simple, single answer.
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The rest of the discussion centered on whether the Center would have
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enough engineering resources this year to lead this. In the end, the
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board decided not to formally vote on it now, but revisit the proposal
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later. Chris suggested that Eugene amend the proposal to reflect
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today's discussion.
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## Elections
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For chairperson, Chris Kipp indicated his willingness to continue as
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chair and was elected unanimously. (Chairs are not required to serve
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past one year, but a willing chair is welcome to serve for longer.)
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Also re-elected without any other nominations being made were Martin
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Odersky (technical advisor) and Seth Tisue (secretary).
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## Community report
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This section was led by Zainab and Eugene.
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Zainab said the London community is currently strong, with more events
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occurring, with attendance up as well. The London Scala group is now
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doing open-source hack days and women-in-Scala meetings, in addition
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to the usual meetups with speakers. ScalaBridge has received feedback
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that it could devote more time to setup and tooling, as that usually
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causes participants more trouble than the language itself.
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Eugene noted that X (aka Twitter) is no longer as universal a source
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of news and discussion; some users remain but others have dispersed to
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Bluesky and/or Mastodon. He said that as a result, the Scala Reddit is
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even more important to the community than before, and the discussions
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and engagement there have been strong recently (including topics about
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education and training).
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He also observed that there have been several extremely active
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language design discussions recently, such as the one about collection
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literals. There was some discussion among the board about how these
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proposals and discussions can best be framed and structured, to
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encourage high quality engagement and ensure that people feel heard.
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There was some also some discussion on how to better coordinate
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language changes with tooling maintainers, including the recent
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introduction of the concept of "preview" features as an intermediate
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state between "experimental" and completed.
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One board member expressed a wish for Scala people (perhaps even
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Center members) to more present at non-Scala conferences, representing
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Scala outside of our own community.
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There was some discussion around how having a smaller engineering
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staff may change community perception of the Center. There was general
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agreement that our publicity should focus on what advances are
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happening and not too much on exactly where they happened (except, of
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course, to give credit where credit is due!). That's part of the idea
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behind the new Scala Highlights newsletter, which is assembled by the
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Center, but isn't restricted to presenting the Center's own
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activities.
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## Management and financial report
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Darja said that a major piece of news since the last meeting was the
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publication in October of the new Scala governance and "development
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guarantees" documents, as described in [this blog
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post](https://www.scala-lang.org/news/new-governance.html).
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Also very important, the publication of the first issue of [Scala
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Highlights](https://www.scala-lang.org/highlights/2025/02/06/highlights-2024.html).
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The first issue covers all of 2024; future issues will have quarterly
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news.
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The Center's finances have improved thanks to one-time donations and
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assistance from several sources. Regardless, hiring additional staff
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would require additional funding. Fundraising efforts are ongoing.
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The Center is also still in the process of reviving Scala Days for
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later in 2025. (Later, after the meeting, plans were finalized and
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[August 2025 dates were announced](https://www.scala-lang.org/blog/2025/02/18/announcing-scala-days-2025.html).)
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## Conclusion
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The next meeting will be held online, probably in April. If possible,
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a late-summer or fall meeting will be held in-person at EPFL.

‎records.md

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### Board meeting minutes
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- [February 5, 2025 - Thirty-Fourth SC Advisory Board Meeting](/minutes/2025/02/05/february-5-2025.html)
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- [April 25, 2024 - Thirty-Second SC Advisory Board Meeting](/minutes/2024/04/25/april-25-2024.html)
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- [February 7, 2024 - Thirty-First SC Advisory Board Meeting](/minutes/2024/02/07/february-7-2024.html)
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- [October 17, 2023 - Thirtieth SC Advisory Board Meeting](/minutes/2023/10/17/october-17-2023.html)

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